The  Country  Pjrson 

Photogravure  —  From  Drawing  bv  W.   Boucher 


Illustrated  Sterling  edition 


The  Country  Parson 

ALBERT  SAVARUS 


The  Peasantry 


BY 
HONORE  de  BALZAC 


With  Introductions  by 

GEORGE  SAINTSBURY 


BOSTON 
DANA  ESTES  &  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


COPYRIGHTED    1901 
BY 

JOHN  D.   AVIL 


A II  Rights  Reserved 


CONTENTS 

PART  I 

INTRODUCTION  -  - 

THE  CO UNTR  Y  PARSON  : 

(Le  Cur£  de  Village) 

I.   VERONIQUE  - 

n.  TASCHERON  -  ... 

III.  THE  CURE  OF    MONTEGNAC 

IV.  MADAME  GRASLIN   AT   MONTEGNAC 
V.    VERONIO.UE   IS  LAID   IN  THE  TOMB 


ALBERT  SA  VARUS 


(.Albert  Suvarus) 


PAGE 
ix 


I 

-  49 

-  78 

-  129 
.    229 

-  271 


PART   II 


INTRODUCTION  - 


THE  PEASANTRY 


CHAP. 

I.  THE  CHATEAU 


(Les  Pay  sans) 
BOOK  I 


II.    A   BUCOUC  OVERLOOKED  BY  VIRGII, 

III.  THE  TAVERN 

IV.  ANOTHER  IDYLL   -      - 
VOL.  10— I 


ix 


3 
20 

34 
52 


iv  CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

V.   THE  ENEMIES  FACE  TO  FACE        -              -              -  68 

VI.    A   TALE   OF   ROBBERS  -  '9° 

VII.   OF  EXTINCT  SOCIAL  SPECIES           -                             -  107 

VIII.   THE  GREAT  REVOLUTIONS  OF  A  LITTLE  VALLEY  121 

IX.    OF  MEDIOCRACY        -                                                               -  146 

x.  A  HAPPY  WOMAN'S  PRESENTIMENTS       -           -  165 
xi.  THE  OARISTYS,  THE  EIGHTEENTH  ECLOGUE  OF 

THEOCRITUS,     LITTLE      APPRECIATED      IN      A 

COURT  OF  ASSIZE                                                               -  l8o 

XII.   SHOWS     HOW    THE    TAVERN     IS    THE    PEOPLE'S 

PARLIAMENT         -                                                                -  199 

XIII.  THE  PEASANTS'   MONEY-LENDER  -                             -  217 

BOOK    II. 

I.  THE  BEST  SOCIETY  OF  SOULANGES                            -  239 

ii.  THE  QUEEN'S  DRAWING  ROOM      -  262 

III.  THE  CAFE  DE  LA  PAIX        -                             -              -  280 

IV.  THE  TRIUMVIRATE  OF  V1LLK-AUX-FAYES               -  291 
V.    HOW   A   VICTORY  WAS  WON  WITHOUT  A   BLOW   -  305 

VI.   THE  FOREST  AND  THE  HARVEST                                  -  313 

VII.    THE   GREYHOUND     ....               -  322 

VIII.    RUSTIC  VIRTUES        -                             ...  334 

IX.    THE  CATASTROPHE                                                  -               -  338 

X.   THE  VICTORY   OF    THE  VANQUISHED          -               -  344 

(Translator,  ELLEN  MARRIAGE) 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 


INTRODUCTION 

PERHAPS  in  no  instance  of  Balzac's  work  is  his  singular  fancy 
for  pulling  that  work  about  more  remarkably  instanced  and 
illustrated  than  in  the  case  of  Le  Cure  de  Village.  The 
double  date,  1837-1845,  which  the  author  attached  to  it,  in 
his  usual  conscientious  manner,  to  indicate  these  revisions, 
has  a  greater  signification  than  almost  anywhere  else.  When 
the  book,  or  rather  its  constituent  parts,  first  appeared  in  the 
Presse  for  1839,  having  been  written  the  winter  before,  not 
only  was  it  very  different  in  detail,  but  the  order  of  the  parts 
was  altogether  dissimilar.  Balzac  here  carried  out  his  favor- 
ite plan — a  plan  followed  by  many  other  authors  no  doubt, 
but  always,  as  it  seems  to  me,  of  questionable  wisdom — that 
of  beginning  in  the  middle  and  then  "throwing  back"  with  a 
long  retrospective  and  explanatory  digression. 

In  this  version  the  story  of  Tascheron's  crime  and  its  pun- 
ishment came  first;  and  it  was  not  till  after  the  execution 
that  the  early  history  of  Veronique  (who  gave  her  name  to 
this  part  as  to  a  Suite  du  Cure  de  Village)  was  introduced. 
This  history  ceased  at  the  crisis  of  her  life ;  and  when  it  was 
taken  up  in  a  third  part,  called  Veronique  au  Tombeau,  only 
the  present  conclusion  of  the  book,  with  her  confession,  was 
given.  The  long  account  of  her  sojourn  at  Montegnac,  of 
her  labors  there,  of  the  episode  of  Farrabesche,  and  so  forth, 
did  not  appear  till  1841,  when  the  whole  book,  with  the  in- 
versions and  insertions  just  indicated,  appeared  in  such  a 
changed  form,  that  even  the  indefatigable  M.  de  Lovenjoul 
dismisses  as  "impossible"  the  idea  of  exhibiting  a  complete 


K  INTRODUCTION 

picture  of  the  various  changes  made.  Nor  was  the  author 
even  yet  contented;  for  in  1845,  before  establishing  it  in  its 
place  in  the  Comedie,  he  not  only,  as  was  his  wont,  took  out 
the  chapter-headings,  leaving  five  divisions  only,  but  intro- 
duced other  alterations,  resulting  in  the  present  condition  of 
the  book. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  dwell  very  much  on  the  advantages 
or  disadvantages  of  these  changes.  There  is  no  doubt  that, 
as  has  been  said  above,  the  trick  of  beginning  the  story  in 
the  middle,  and  then  doubling  back  on  the  start,  has  many 
drawbacks.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  that  of  an  introduction 
which  has  apparently  very  little  to  do  with  anything,  and 
which  has  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  title  of  the  book, 
has  others;  and  I  do  not  know  that  in  the  final  reconstitu- 
tion  Balzac  has  made  Veronique's  part  in  the  matter,  even 
in  her  confession,  as  clear  as  it  should  be.  It  is  indeed  almost 
unavoidable  that  twisting  and  turning  the  shape  of  a  story 
about,  as  he  was  wont  to  do,  should  bring  the  penalty  of  de- 
stroying, or  at  least  damaging,  its  unity. 

As  the  book  stands  it  may  be  said  to  consist  of  three  parts 
united  rather  by  identity  of  the  personages  who  act  in  them 
than  by  exact  dramatic  connection.  There  is,  to  take  the 
title-part  first  (though  it  is  by  no  means  the  most  really 
important  or  pervading)  the  picture  of  the  "Cure  de  Village," 
which  is  almost  an  exact,  and  beyond  doubt  a  designed,  pendant 
to  that  of  the  "Medecin  de  Champagne."  The  Abbe  Bonnet 
indeed  is  not  able  to  carry  out  economic  ameliorations,  as 
Dr.  Benassis  is,  personally,  but  by  inducing  Veronique  to 
do  so  he  brings  about  the  same  result,  and  on  an  even  larger 
scale.  His  personal  action  (with  the  necessary  changes  for 
his  profession)  is  also  tolerably  identical,  and  on  the  whole 


INTRODUCTION  xl 

the  two  portraits  may  fairly  be  hung  together  as  Balzac's 
ideal  representations  of  the  good  man  in  soul-curing  and 
body-curing  respectively.  Both  are  largely  conditioned  by 
his  eighteenth-century  fancy  for  "playing  Providence/'  and 
by  his  delight  in  extensive  financial-commercial  schemes.  I 
believe  that  in  both  books  these  schemes  have  been  stumbling- 
blocks,  if  not  to  all  readers,  yet  to  a  good  many.  But  the 
beauty  of  the  portraiture  of  the  "Cure"  is  nearly,  if  not  quite 
equal,  to  that  of  the  doctor,  though  the  institution  of  celibacy 
has  prevented  Balzac  from  giving  a  key  to  the  conduct  of 
Bonnet  quite  as  sufficient  as  that  which  he  furnished  for  the 
conduct  of  Benassis. 

The  second  part  of  the  book  is  the  crime — episodic  as  re- 
gards the  criminal,  cardinal  as  regards  other  points — of 
Tascheron.  Balzac  was  very  fond  of  "his  crimes;"  and  it  is 
quite  worth  while  in  connection  with  his  handling  of  the 
murder  here  to  study  the  curious  story  of  his  actual  interfer- 
ence in  the  famous  Peytel  case,  which  also  interested  Thack- 
eray so  much  in  his  Paris  days.  The  Tascheron  case  itself 
(which  from  a  note  appears  to  have  been  partly  suggested 
by  some  actual  affair)  no  doubt  has  interests  for  those  who  like 
such  things,  and  the  picture  of  the  criminal  in  prison  is  very 
striking.  But  we  see  and  know  so  very  little  of  Tascheron 
himself,  and  even  to  the  very  last  (which  is  long  afterwards) 
we  are  left  so  much  in  the  dark  as  to  his  love  for  Veronique, 
that  the  thing  has  an  extraneous  air.  It  is  like  a  short  story 
foisted  in. 

This  objection  connects  itself  at  once  with  a  similar  one 
to  the  delineation  of  Veronique.  There  is  nothing  in  her 
conduct  intrinsically  impossible,  or  even  improbable.  A  girl 
of  her  temperament,  at  once,  as  often  happens,  strongly  sen- 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

sual  and  strongly  devotional,  deprived  of  her  good  looks  by 
illness,  thrown  into  the  arms  of  a  husband  physically  repul- 
sive, and  after  a  short  time  not  troubling  himself  to  be 
amiable  in  any  other  way,  might  very  well  take  refuge  in  the 
substantial,  if  not  ennobling,  consolations  offered  by  a  good- 
looking  and  amiable  young  fellow  of  the  lower  class.  Her 
conduct  at  the  time  of  the  crime  (her  exact  complicity  in 
which  is,  as  we  have  said,  rather  imperfectly  indicated)  is 
also  fairly  probable,  and  to  her  repentance  and  amendment 
of  life  no  exception  can  be  taken.  But  only  in  this  last  stage 
do  we  really  see  anything  of  the  inside  of  Veronique's  nature ; 
and  even  then  we  do  not  see  it  completely.  The  author's 
silence  on  the  details  of  the  actual  liaison  with  Tascheron 
has  its  advantages,  but  it  also  has  its  defects. 

Still,  the  book  is  one  of  great  attraction  and  interest,  and 
takes,  if  I  may  judge  by  my  own  experience,  a  high  rank  for 
enchaining  power  among  that  class  of  Balzac's  books  which 
cannot  be  put  exactly  highest.  If  the  changes  made  in  it 
by  its  author  have  to  some  extent  dislocated  it  as  a  whole, 
they  have  resulted  in  very  high  excellence  for  almost  all  the 
parts. 


Albert  Savarus,  with  its  enshrined  story  of  "L'Ambitieux 
par  Amour"  (something  of  an  oddity  for  Balzac,  who  often 
puts  a  story  within  a  story,  but  less  formally  than  this),  con- 
tains various  appeals,  and  shows  not  a  few  of  its  author's 
well-known  interests  in  politics,  in  affairs,  in  newspapers,  not 
to  mention  the  enumerations  of  dots  and  fortunes  which 
he  never  could  refuse  himself.  The  affection  of  Savarus  for 
the  Duchesse  d'Argaiolo  may  interest  different  persons  differ- 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

ently.  It  seems  to  me  a  little  fade.  But  the  character  of 
Kosalie  de  Watteville  is  in  a  very  different  rank.  Here  only, 
except,  perhaps,  in  the  case  of  Mademoiselle  de  Verneuil, 
whose  unlucky  experiences  had  emancipated  her,  has  Balzac 
depicted  a  girl  full  of  character,  individuality,  and  life.  It 
was  apparently  necessary  that  Eosalie  should  be  made  not 
wholly  amiable  in  order  to  obtain  this  accession  of  wits  and 
force,  and  to  be  freed  from  the  fatal  gift  of  candeur,  the  curse 
of  the  French  ingenue.  Her  creator  has  also  thought  proper 
to  punish  her  further,  and  cruelly,  at  the  end  of  the  book. 
Nevertheless,  though  her  story  may  be  less  interesting  than 
either  of  theirs,  it  is  impossible  not  to  put  her  in  a  much 
higher  rank  as  a  heroine  than  either  Eugenie  or  Ursule,  and 
not  to  wish  that  Balzac  had  included  the  conception  of  her  in 
a  more  important  structure  of  fiction. 

Albert  Savarus  appeared  in  sixty  headed  chapters  in  the 
Siecle  for  May  and  June  1842,  and  then  assumed  its  place  in 
the  Comedie.  But  though  left  there,  it  also  formed  part  of 
a  two- volume  issue  by  Souverain  in  1844,  in  company  with 
La  Muse  du  departement.  "Kosalie"  was  at  first  named 
"Philomene." 

As  something  has  necessarily  been  said  already  about  the 
book-history  of  the  Cure  de  Village,  little  remains  but  to  give 
exact  dates  and  places  of  appearance.  The  Presse  published 
the  (original)  first  part  in  December-January  1838-39,  the 
original  second  (Veronique)  six  months  later,  and  the  third 
(Veronique  au  Tombeau)  in  August.  All  had  chapters  and 
chapter-titles.  As  a  book  it  was  in  its  first  complete  form 
published  by  Souverain  in  1841,  and  was  again  altered  when 
it  took  rank  in  the  Comedie  six  years  later. 

a.  s. 


THE  COUNTRY   PARSON 
I 

VEEONIQUE 

AT  the  lower  end  of  Limoges,  at  the  corner  of  the  Rue  de  la 
Vieille-Poste  and  the  Rue  de  la  Cite,  there  stood,  some  thirty 
years  hack,  an  old-fashioned  shop  of  the  kind  that  seems  to 
have  changed  in  nothing  since  the  Middle  Ages.  The  great 
stone  paving-slabs,  riven  with  countless  cracks,  were  laid 
upon  the  earth;  the  damp  oozed  up  through  them  here  and 
there;  while  the  heights  and  hollows  of  this  primitive  floor- 
ing would  have  tripped  up  those  who  were  not  careful  to  ob- 
serve them.  Through  the  dust  on  the  walls  it  was  possible 
to  discern  a  sort  of  mosaic  of  timber  and  bricks,  iron  and 
stone,  a  heterogeneous  mass  which  owed  its  compact  solidity 
to  time,  and  perhaps  to  chance.  For  more  than  two  centuries 
the  huge  rafters  of  the  ceiling  had  bent  without  breaking  be- 
neath the  weight  of  the  upper  stories,  which  were  constructed 
of  wooden  framework,  protected  from  the  weather  by  slates 
arranged  in  a  geometrical  pattern ;  altogether,  it  was  a  quaint 
example  of  a  burgess'  house  in  olden  times.  Once  there  had 
been  carved  figures  on  the  wooden  window-frames,  but  sun 
and  rain  had  destroyed  the  ornaments,  and  the  windows 
themselves  stood  all  awry;  some  bent  outwards,  some  bent 
in,  yet  others  were  minded  to  part  company,  and  one  and  all 
carried  a  little  soil  deposited  (it  would  be  hard  to  say  how) 
in  crannies  hollowed  by  the  rain,  where  a  few  shy  creeping 
plants  and  thin  weeds  grew  to  break  into  meagre  blossom  in 

(1) 


2  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

the  spring.  Velvet  mosses  covered  the  roof  and  the  window- 
sills. 

The  pillar  which  supported  the  corner  of  the  house,  built 
though  it  was  of  composite  masonry,  that  is  to  say,  partly  of 
stone,  partly  of  brick  and  flints,  was  alarming  to  behold  by 
reason  of  its  curvature;  it  looked  as  though  it  must  give  way 
some  day  beneath  the  weight  of  the  superstructure  whose 
gable  projected  fully  six  inches.  For  which  reason  the 
Local  Authorities  and  the  Board  of  Works  bought  the  house 
and  pulled  it  down  to  widen  the  street.  The  venerable  corner 
pillar  had  its  charms  for  lovers  of  old  Limoges;  it  carried 
a  pretty  sculptured  shrine  and  a  mutilated  image  of  the  Vir- 
gin, broken  during  the  Kevolution.  Citizens  of  an  archa?o- 
logical  turn  could  discover  traces  of  the  stone  sill  meant  to 
hold  candlesticks  and  to  receive  wax  tapers  and  flowers  and 
votive  offerings  of  the  pious. 

Within  the  shop  a  wooden  staircase  at  the  further  end 
gave  access  to  the  two  floors  above  and  to  the  attics  in  the 
roof.  The  house  itself,  packed  in  between  two  neighboring 
dwellings,  had  little  depth  from  back  to  front,  and  no 
light  save  from  the  windows  which  gave  upon  the  street,  the 
two  rooms  on  each  floor  having  a  window  apiece,  one  look- 
ing out  into  the  Rue  de  la  Vieille-Poste,  and  the  other  into 
the  Rue  de  la  Cite.  In  the  Middle  Ages  no  artisan  was  bet- 
ter housed.  The  old  corner  shop  must  surely  have  belonged 
to  some  armorer  or  cutler,  or  master  of  some  craft  which 
could  be  carried  on  in  the  open  air,  for  it  was  impossible  for 
its  inmates  to  see  until  the  heavily-ironed  shutters  were  taken 
down  and  air  as  well  as  light  freely  admitted.  There  were 
two  doors  (as  is  usually  the  case  where  a  shop  faces  into  two 
streets),  one  on  either  side  the  pillar.  But  for  the  interrup- 
tion of  the  white  threshold  stones,  hollowed  by  the  wear  of 
centuries,  the  whole  shop  front  consisted  of  a  low  wall  which 
rose  to  elbow  height.  Along  the  top  of  this  wall  a  groove  had 
been  contrived,  and  a  similar  groove  ran  the  length  of  the 
beam  above,  which  supported  the  weight  of  the  house  wall. 
Into  these  grooves  slid  the  heavy  shutters,  secured  by  huge 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  3 

iron  bolts  and  bars;  and  when  the  doorways  had  been  made 
fast  in  like  manner,  the  artisan's  workshop  was  as  good  as 
a  fortress. 

For  the  first  twenty  years  of  this  present  century  the 
Limousins  had  been  accustomed  to  see  the  interior  filled  up 
with  old  iron  and  brass,  cart-springs,  tires,  bells,  and  every 
sort  of  m'etal  from  the  demolition  of  houses;  but  the  curious 
in  the  debris  of  the  old  town  discovered,  on  a  closer  inspec- 
tion, the  traces  of  a  forge  in  the  place  and  a  long  streak  of 
soot,  signs  which  confirmed  the  guesses  of  archaeologists  as  to 
the  original  purpose  of  the  dwelling.  On  the  first  floor  there 
was  a  living  room  and  a  kitchen,  two  more  rooms  on  the  sec- 
ond, and  an  attic  in  the  roof,  which  was  used  as  a  warehouse 
for  goods  more  fragile  than  the  hardware  tumbled  down  pell- 
mell  in  the  shop. 

The  house  had  been  first  let  and  then  sold  to  one  Sauviat, 
a  hawker,  who  from  1792  till  1796  traveled  in  Auvergne  for 
a  distance  of  fifty  leagues  round,  bartering  pots,  plates, 
dishes,  and  glasses,  all  the  gear,  in  fact,  needed  by  the 
poorest  cottagers,  for  old  iron,  brass,  lead,  and  metal  of  every 
sort  and  description.  The  Auvergnat  would  give  a  brown 
earthen  pipkin  worth  a  couple  of  sous  for  a  pound  weight  of 
lead  or  a  couple  of  pounds  of  iron,  a  broken  spade  or  hoe,  or 
an  old  cracked  saucepan;  and  was  always  judge  in  his  own 
cause,  and  gave  his  own  weights.  In  three  years'  time  Sauviat 
took  another  trade  in  addition,  and  became  a  tinman. 

In  1793  he  was  able  to  buy  a  chateau  put  up  for  sale  by 
the  nation.  This  he  pulled  down;  and  doubtless  repeated  a 
profitable  experiment  at  more  than  one  point  in  his  sphere  of 
operations.  After  a  while  these  first  essays  of  his  gave  him  an 
idea ;  he  suggested  a  piece  of  business  on  a  large  scale  to  a  fel- 
low-countryman in  Paris;  and  so  it  befell  that  the  Black 
Band,  so  notorious  for  the  havoc  which  it  wrought  among 
old  buildings,  was  a  sprout  of  old  Sauviat's  brain,  the  in- 
vention of  the  hawker  whom  all  Limoges  had  seen  for  seven- 
and-twenty  years  in  his  tumbledown  shop  among  his  broken 
bells,  flails,  chains,  brackets,  twisted  leaden  gutters,  and 


4  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

heterogeneous  old  iron.  In  justice  to  Sauviat,  it  should  be 
said  that  he  never  knew  how  large  and  how  notorious  the  as- 
sociation became;  he  only  profited  by  it  to  the  extent  of  the 
capital  which  he  invested  with  the  famous  firm  of  Brezac. 

At  last  the  Auvergnat  grew  tired  of  roaming  from  fair  to 
fair  and  place  to  place,  and  settled  down  in  Limoges,  where, 
in  1797,  he  had  married  a  wife,  the  motherless  daughter  of 
a  tinman,  Champagnac  by  name.  "When  the  father-in-law 
died,  he  bought  the  house  in  which  he  had,  in  a  manner, 
localized  his  trade  in  old  iron,  though  for  some  three  years 
after  his  marriage  he  had  still  made  his  rounds,  his  wife  ac- 
companying him.  Sauviat  had  completed  his  fiftieth  year 
when  he  married  old  Champagnac's  daughter,  and  the  bride 
herself  was  certainly  thirty  years  old  at  the  least.  Champa- 
gnac's girl  was  neither  pretty  nor  blooming.  She  was  born  in 
Auvergne,  and  the  dialect  was  a  mutual  attraction;  she  was, 
moreover,  of  the  heavy  build  which  enables  a  woman  to  stand 
the  roughest  work;  so  she  went  with  Sauviat  on  his  rounds, 
carried  loads  of  lead  and  iron  on  her  back,  and  drove  the 
sorry  carrier's  van  full  of  the  pottery  on  which  her  husband 
made  usurious  profits,  little  as  his  customers  imagined  it. 
La  Champagnac  was  sun-burned  and  high-colored.  She  en- 
joyed rude  health,  exhibiting  when  she  laughed  a  row  of  teeth 
large  and  white  as  blanched  almonds,  and,  as  to  physique, 
possessed  the  bust  and  hips  of  a  woman  destined  by  Nature 
to  be  a  mother.  Her  prolonged  spinsterhood  was  entirely  due 
to  her  father;  he  had  not  read  Moliere,  but  he  raised  Harpa- 
gon's  cry  of  "Sans  dot!"  which  scared  suitors.  The  "Sans  dot" 
did  not  frighten  Sauviat  away ;  he  was  not  averse  to  receiving 
the  bride  without  a  portion;  in  the  first  place,  a  would-be 
bridegroom  of  fifty  ought  not  to  raise  difficulties;  and,  in 
the  second,  his  wife  saved  him  the  expense  of  a  servant.  He 
added  nothing  to  the  furniture  of  his  room.  On  his  wedding 
day  it  contained  a  four-post  bedstead  hung  with  green  serge 
curtains  and  a  valance  with  a  scalloped  edge;  a  dresser,  a 
chest  of  drawers,  four  easy-chairs,  a  table,  and  a  looking-glass, 
all  bought  at  different  times  and  from  different  places ;  and  till 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  5 

he  left  the  old  house  for  good,  the  list  remained  the  same.  On 
the  upper  shelves  of  the  dresser  stood  sundry  pewter  plates 
and  dishes,  no  two  of  them  alike.  After  this  description  of 
the  bedroom,  the  kitchen  may  be  left  to  the  reader's  imagina- 
tion. 

Neither  husband  nor  wife  could  read,  a  slight  defect  of 
education  which  did  not  prevent  them  from  reckoning  money 
to  admiration,  nor  from  carrying  on  one  of  the  most  prosper- 
ous of  all  trades,  for  Sauviat  never  bought  anything  unless 
he  felt  sure  of  making  a  hundred  per  cent  on  the  transac- 
tion, and  dispensed  with  book-keeping  and  counting-house 
by  carrying  on  a  ready-money  business.  He  possessed,  more- 
over, a  faculty  of  memory  so  perfect,  that  an  article  might 
remain  for  five  years  in  his  shop,  and  at  the  end  of  the  time 
both  he  and  his  wife  could  recollect  the  price  they  gave  for  it 
to  a  farthing,  together  with  the  added  interest  for  every  year 
since  the  outlay. 

Sauviat's  wife,  when  she  was  not  busy  about  the  house,  al- 
ways sat  on  a  rickety  wooden  chair  in  her  shop  door  beside 
the  pillar,  knitting,  and  watching  the  passers-by,  keeping  an 
eye  on  the  old  iron,  and  selling,  weighing,  and  delivering  it 
herself  if  Sauviat  was  out  on  one  of  his  journeys.  At  day- 
break you  might  hear  the  dealer  in  old  iron  taking  down  the 
shutters,  the  dog  was  let  loose  into  the  street,  and  very  soon 
Sauviat's  wife  came  down  to  help  her  husband  to  arrange 
their  wares.  Against  the  low  wall  of  the  shop  in  the  Sue  de  la 
Cite  and  the  Kue  de  la  Vieille-Poste,  they  propped  their 
heterogeneous  collection  of  broken  gun-barrels,  cart  springs, 
and  harness  bells, — all  the  gimcracks,  in  short,  which  served 
as  a  trade  sign  and  gave  a  sufficiently  poverty-stricken  look 
to  a  shop  which  in  reality  often  contained  twenty  thousand 
francs'  worth  of  lead,  steel,  and  bell  metal.  The  retired 
hawker  and  his  wife  never  spoke  of  their  money;  they  hid  it 
as  a  malefactor  conceals  a  crime,  and  for  a  long  while  were 
suspected  of  clipping  gold  louis  and  silver  crowns. 

When  old  Champagnac  died,  the  Sauviats  made  no  in- 
ventory. They  searched  every  corner  and  cranny  of  the  old 


6  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

man's  house  with  the  quickness  of  rats,  stripped  it  bare  as 
a  corpse,  and  sold  the  tinware  themselves  in  their  own  shop. 
Once  a  year,  when  December  came  round,  Sauviat  would  go 
to  Paris,  traveling  in  a  public  conveyance ;  from  which  prem- 
ises, observers  in  the  quarter  concluded  that  the  dealer  in 
old  iron  saw  to  his  investments  in  Paris  himself,  so  that  he 
might  keep  the  amount  of  his  money  a  secret.  It  came  out 
in  after  years  that  as  a  lad  Sauviat  had  known  one  of  the 
most  celebrated  metal  merchants  in  Paris,  a  fellow-country- 
man from  Auvergne,  and  that  Sauviat's  savings  were  in- 
vested with  the  prosperous  firm  of  Brezac,  the  corner-stone 
of  the  famous  association  of  the  Black  Band,  which  was 
started,  as  has  been  said,  by  Sauviat's  advice,  and  in  which 
he  held  shares. 

Sauviat  was  short  and  stout.  He  had  a  weary-looking  face 
and  an  honest  expression,  which  attracted  customers,  and  was 
of  no  little  use  to  him  in  the  matter  of  sales.  The  dryness 
of  his  affirmations,  and  the  perfect  indifference  of  his  manner, 
aided  his  pretensions.  It  was  not  easy  to  guess  the  color  of 
the  skin  beneath  the  black  metallic  grime  which  covered  his 
curly  hair  and  countenance  seamed  with  the  smallpox.  His 
forehead  was  not  without  a  certain  nobility;  indeed,  he  re- 
sembled the  traditional  type  chosen  by  painters  for  Saint 
Peter,  the  man  of  the  people  among  the  apostles,  the  roughest 
among  their  number,  and  likewise  the  shrewdest;  Sauviat 
had  the  hands  of  an  indefatigable  worker,  rifted  by  inefface- 
able cracks,  square-shaped,  and  coarse  and  large.  The  mus- 
cular framework  of  his  chest  seemed  indestructible.  All 
through  his  life  he  dressed  like  a  hawker,  wearing  the  thick 
iron-bound  shoes,  the  blue  stockings  which  his  wife  knitted 
for  him,  the  leather  gaiters,  breeches  of  bottle-green  vel- 
veteen, a  coat  with  short  skirts  of  the  same  material,  and  a 
flapped  waistcoat,  where  the  copper  key  of  a  silver  watch 
dangled  from  an  iron  chain,  worn  by  constant  friction,  till  it 
shone  like  polished  steel.  Round  his  neck  he  wore  a  cotton 
handkerchief,  frayed  by  the  constant  rubbing  of  his  beard. 
On  Sundays  and  holidays  he  appeared  in  a  maroon  overcoat 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  7 

so  carefully  kept  that  he  bought  a  new  one  but  twice  in  a 
score  of  years. 

As  for  their  manner  of  living,  the  convicts  in  the  hulks 
might  be  said  to  fare  sumptuously  in  comparison;  it  was  a 
day  of  high  festival  indeed  when  they  ate  meat.  Before  La 
Sauviat  could  bring  herself  to  part  with  the  money  needed 
for  their  daily  sustenance,  she  rummaged  through  the  two 
pockets  under  her  skirt,  and  never  drew  forth  coin  that  was 
not  clipped  or  light  weight,  eyeing  the  crowns  of  six  livres 
and  fifty  sous  pieces  dolorously  before  she  changed  one  of 
them.  The  Sauviats  contented  themselves,  for  the  most  part, 
with  herrings,  dried  peas,  cheese,  hard-boiled  eggs  and  salad, 
and  vegetables  dressed  in  the  cheapest  way.  They  lived  from 
hand  to  mouth,  laying  in  nothing  except  a  bundle  of  garlic 
now  and  again,  or  a  rope  of  onions,  which  could  not  spoil,  and 
cost  them  a  mere  trifle.  As  for  firewood,  La  Sauviat  bought 
the  few  sticks  which  they  required  in  winter  of  the  faggot- 
sellers  day  by  day.  By  seven  o'clock  in  winter  and  nine  in 
summer  the  shutters  were  fastened,  the  master  and  mistress 
in  bed,  and  their  huge  dog,  who  picked  up  his  living  in  the 
kitchens  of  the  quarter,  on  guard  in  the  shop ;  Mother  Sauviat 
did  not  spend  three  francs  a  year  on  candles. 

A  joy  came  into  their  sober  hard-working  lives ;  it  was  a  joy 
that  came  in  the  natural  order  of  things,  and  caused  the  only 
outlay  which  they  had  been  known  to  make.  In  May  1802, 
La  Sauviat  bore  a  daughter.  No  one  was  called  in  to  her  as- 
sistance, and  five  days  later  she  was  stirring  about  her  house 
again.  She  nursed  her  child  herself,  sitting  on  the  chair  in 
the  doorway,  selling  her  wares  as  usual,  with  the  baby  at  her 
breast.  Her  milk  cost  nothing,  so  for  two  years  she  suckled 
the  little  one,  who  was  none  the  worse  for  it,  for  little 
Veronique  grew  to  be  the  prettiest  child  in  the  lower  town, 
so  pretty  indeed,  that  passers-by  would  stop  to  look  at  her. 
The  neighbors  saw  in  old  Sauviat  traces  of  a  tenderness 
of  which  they  had  believed  him  incapable.  While  the  wife 
made  the  dinner  ready  he  used  to  rock  the  little  one  in  his 
arms,  crooning  the  refrain  of  some  Auvergnat  song;  and  the 


£  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

workmen  as  they  passed  sometimes  saw  him  sitting  motion- 
less, gazing  at  little  VSronique  asleep  on  her  mother's  knee. 
His  gruff  voice  grew  gentle  for  the  child;  he  would  wipe  his 
hands  on  his  trousers  before  taking  her  up.  When  Veronique 
was  learning  to  walk,  her  father  squatted  on  his  heels  four 
paces  away,  holding  out  his  arms  to  her,  gleeful  smiles  puck- 
ering the  deep  wrinkles  on  the  harsh,  stern  face  of  bronze; 
it  seemed  as  if  the  man  of  iron,  brass,  and  lead  had  once 
more  become  flesh  and  blood.  As  he  stood  leaning  against 
the  pillar  motionless  as  a  statue,  he  would  start  at  a  cry  from 
Veronique,  and  spring  over  the  iron  to  find  her,  for  she 
spent  her  childhood  in  playing  about  among  the  metallic 
spoils  of  old  chateaux  heaped  up  in  the  recesses  of  the  shop, 
and  never  hurt  herself;  and  if  she  played  in  the  street  or  with 
the  neighbors'  children,  she  was  never  allowed  out  of  her 
mother's  sight. 

It  is  worth  while  to  add  that  the  Sauviats  were  eminently 
devout.  Even  when  the  Eevolution  was  at  its  height  Sauviat 
kept  Sundays  and  holidays  punctually.  Twice  in  those  days 
he  had  all  but  lost  his  head  for  going  to  hear  mass  said  by 
a  priest  who  had  not  taken  the  oath  to  the  Eepublic.  He 
found  himself  in  prison  at  last,  justly  accused  of  conniving 
at  the  escape  of  a  bishop  whose  life  he  had  saved ;  but  luckily 
for  the  hawker,  steel  files  and  iron  bars  were  old  acquaint- 
ances of  his,  and  he  made  his  escape.  Whereupon  the  Court 
finding  that  he  failed  to  put  in  an  appearance,  gave  judgment 
by  default,  and  condemned  him  to  death ;  and  it  may  be  added, 
that  as  he  never  returned  to  clear  himself,  he  finally  died 
under  sentence  of  death.  In  his  religious  sentiments  his  wife 
shared;  the  parsimonious  rule  of  the  household  was  only  re- 
laxed in  the  name  of  religion.  Punctually  the  two  paid  their 
quota  for  sacramental  bread,  and  gave  money  for  charity. 
If  the  curate  of  Saint-E*tienne  came  to  ask  for  alms,  Sauviat 
or  his  wife  gave  without  fuss  or  hesitation  what  they  believed 
to  be  their  due  share  towards  the  funds  of  the  parish.  The 
broken  Virgin  on  their  pillar  was  decked  with  sprays  of  box 
frhen  Easter  came  round;  and  so  long  as  there  were  flowers, 


When  Veronique  was  learning  to  walk,  her  father  squatted  upon  his 
heels  four  paces  away 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  9 

the  passers-by  saw  that  the  blue  glass  bouquet-holders  were 
never  empty,  and  this  especially  after  Veronique's  birth. 
Whenever  there  was  a  procession  the  Sauviats  never  failed  to 
drape  their  house  with  hangings  and  garlands,  and  con- 
tributed to  the  erection  and  adornment  of  the  altar — the 
pride  of  their  street. 

So  Veromque  was  brought  up  in  the  Christian  faith.  As 
soon  as  she  was  seven  years  old,  she  was  educated  by  a  Gray 
Sister,  an  Auvergnate,  to  whom  the  Sauviats  had  rendered 
some  little  service;  for  both  of  them  were  sufficiently  oblig- 
ing so  long  as  their  time  or  their  substance  was  not  in  ques- 
tion, and  helpful  after  the  manner  of  the  poor,  who  lend 
themselves  with  a  certain  heartiness.  It  was  the  Franciscan 
Sister  who  taught  Veronique  to  read  and  write ;  she  instructed 
her  pupil  in  the  History  of  the  People  of  God,  in  the  Cate- 
chism and  the  Old  and  New  Testaments,  and,  to  a  certain 
small  extent,  in  the  rules  of  arithmetic.  That  was  all.  The 
good  Sister  thought  that  it  would  be  enough,  -but  even  this 
was  too  much. 

Veronique  at  nine  years  of  age  astonished  the  quarter  by 
her  beauty.  Every  one  admired  a  face  which  might  one 
day  be  worthy  of  the  pencil  of  some  impassioned  seeker  after 
an  ideal  type.  "The  little  Virgin,"  as  they  called  her,  gave 
promise  of  being  graceful  of  form  and  fair  of  face ;  the  thick, 
bright  hair  which  set  off  the  delicate  outlines  of  her  features 
completed  her  resemblance  to  the  Madonna.  Those  who  have 
seen  the  divine  child-virgin  in  Titian's  great  picture  of  the 
Presentation  in  the  Temple  may  know  what  Veronique  was 
like  in  these  years;  she  had  the  same  frank  innocence  of  ex- 
pression, the  same  look  as  of  a  wondering  seraph  in  her  eyes, 
the  same  noble  simplicity,  the  same  queenly  bearing. 

Two  years  later,  Veronique  fell  ill  of  the  smallpox,  and 
would  have  died  of  it  but  for  Sister  Martha,  who  nursed  her. 
During  those  two  months,  while  her  life  was  in  danger,  the 
quarter  learned  how  tenderly  the  Sauviats  loved  their  daugh- 
ter. Sauviat  attended  no  sales,  and  went  nowhere.  All  day 
long  he  stayed  in  the  shop,  or  went  restlessly  up  and  down 


10  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

the  stairs,  and  he  and  his  wife  sat  up  night  after  night  with 
the  child.  So  deep  was  his  dumb  grief,  that  no  one  dared 
to  speak  to  him;  the  neighbors  watched  him  pityingly,  and 
asked  for  news  of  Veronique  of  no  one  but  Sister  Martha. 
The  days  came  when  the  child's  life  hung  by  a  thread,  and 
neighbors  and  passers-by  saw,  for  the  first  and  only  time 
in  Sauviat's  life,  the  slow  tears  rising  under  his 'eyelids  and 
rolling  down  his  hollow  cheeks.  He  never  wiped  them  away. 
For  hours  he  sat  like  one  stupefied,  not  daring  to  go  upstairs 
to  the  sick  room,  staring  before  him  with  unseeing  eyes;  he 
might  have  been  robbed,  and  he  would  not  have  noticed  it. 

Veronique's  life  was  saved,  not  so  her  beauty.  A  uniform 
tint,  in  which  red  and  brown  were  evenly  blended,  overspread 
her  face;  the  disease  left  countless  little  scars  which 
coarsened  the  surface  of  the  skin,  and  wrought  havoc  with 
the  delicate  underlying  tissues.  Nor  had  her  forehead  es- 
caped the  ravages  of  the  scourge;  it  was  brown,  and  covered 
with  dints  like  the  marks  of  hammer  strokes.  No  combina- 
tion is  more  discordant  than  a  muddy-brown  complexion  and 
fair  hair;  the  pre-established  harmony  of  coloring  is  broken. 
Deep  irregular  seams  in  the  surface  had  spoiled  the  purity 
of  her  features  and  the  delicacy  of  the  outlines  of  her  face; 
the  Grecian  profile,  the  subtle  curves  of  the  chin  finely 
moulded  as  white  porcelain,  were  scarcely  discernible  beneath 
the  coarsened  skin;  the  disease  had  only  spared  what  it  was 
powerless  to  injure — the  teeth  and  eyes.  But  Veronique  did 
not  lose  her  grace  and  beauty  of  form,  the  full  rounded  curves 
of  her  figure,  nor  the  slenderness  of  her  waist.  At  fifteen  she 
was  a  graceful  girl,  and  (for  the  comfort  of  the  Sauviats) 
a  good  girl  and  devout,  hard-working,  industrious,  always  at 
home. 

After  her  convalescence  and  first  communion,  her  father 
and  mother  arranged  for  her  the  two  rooms  on  the  second 
floor.  Some  glimmering  notion  of  what  is  meant  by  comfort 
passed  through  old  Sauviat's  mind;  hard  fare  might  do  for 
him  and  his  wife,  but  now  a  dim  idea  of  making  compensation 
for  a  loss  which  his  daughter  had  not  felt  as  yet,  crossed 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  U 

his  brain.  Veronique  had  lost  the  beauty  of  which  these 
two  had  been  so  proud,  and  thenceforward  became  the  dearer 
to  them,  and  the  more  precious  in  their  eyes. 

So  one  day  Sauviat  came  in,  carrying  a  carpet,  a  chance 
purchase,  on  his  back,  and  this  he  himself  nailed  down  on 
the  floor  of  Veronique's  room.  He  went  to  a  sale  of  furni- 
ture at  a  chateau,  and  secured  for  her  the  red  damask-cur- 
tained bed  of  some  great  lady,  and  hangings  and  chairs  and 
easy-chnirs  covered  with  the  same  stuff.  Gradually  he  fur- 
nished his  daughter's  rooms  with  second-hand  purchases,  in 
complete  ignorance  of  the  real  value  of  the  things.  He  set 
pots  of  mignonette  on  the  window-sill,  and  brought  back 
flowers  for  her  from  his  wanderings;  sometimes  it  was  a 
rosebush,  sometimes  a  tree-carnation,  and  plants  of  all  kinds, 
doubtless  given  to  him  by  gardeners  and  innkeepers.  If 
Veronique  had  known  enough  of  other  people  to  draw  com- 
parisons, and  to  understand  their  manners  of  life  and  the 
characters  and  the  ignorance  of  her  parents,  she  would  have 
known  how  great  the  affection  was  which  showed  itself  in 
these  little  things;  but  the  girl  gave  her  father  and  mother 
the  love  that  springs  from  an  exquisite  nature — an  instinctive 
and  unreasoning  love. 

Veronique  must  have  the  finest  linen  which  her  mother 
could  buy,  and  La  Sauviat  allowed  her  daughter  to  choose  her 
own  dresses.  Both  father  and  mother  were  pleased  with  her 
moderation;  Veronique  had  no  ruinous  tastes.  A  blue  silk 
gown  for  holiday  wear,  a  winter  dress  of  coarse  merino  for 
working  days,  and  a  striped  cotton  gown  in  summer;  with 
these  she  was  content. 

On  Sunday  she  went  to  mass  with  her  father  and  mother, 
and  walked  with  them  after  vespers  along  the  banks  of  the 
Vienne  or  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  town.  All  through 
the  week  she  stayed  in  the  house,  busy  over  the  tapestry-work, 
which  was  sold  for  the  benefit  of  the  poor,  or  the  plain  sewing 
for  the  hospital — no  life  could  be  more  simple,  more  innocent, 
more  exemplary  than  hers.  She  had  other  occupations  besides 
her  sewing;  she  read  to  herself,  but  only  such  books  as  the 


12  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

curate  of  Saint-Etienne  lent  to  her.  (Sister  Martha  had 
introduced  the  priest  to  the  Sauviat  family.) 

For  Veronique  all  the  laws  of  the  household  economy  were 
set  aside.  Her  mother  delighted  to  cook  dainty  fare  for  her, 
and  made  separate  dishes  for  her  daughter.  Father  and 
mother  might  continue,  as  before,  to  eat  the  walnuts  and 
the  hard  bread,  the  herrings,  and  the  dried  peas  fried  with 
a  little  salt  butter;  but  for  Veronique,  nothing  was  fresh 
enough  nor  good  enough. 

"Veronique  must  be  a  great  expense  to  you/'  remarked 
the  hatter  who  lived  opposite.  He  estimated  old  Sauviat's 
fortune  at  a  hundred  thousand  francs,  and  had  thoughts  of 
Veronique  for  his  son. 

"Yes,  neighbor;  yes,  neighbor;  yes,"  old  Sauviat  an- 
swered, "she  might  ask  me  for  ten  crowns,  and  I  should 
let  her  have  them,  I  should.  She  has  everything  she  wants, 
but  she  never  asks  for  anything.  She  is  as  good  and  gentle 
as  a  lamb !" 

And,  in  fact,  Veronique  did  not  know  the  price  of  any- 
thing; she  had  no  wants;  she  never  saw  a  piece  of  gold  till 
the  day  of  her  marriage,  and  had  no  money  of  her  own ;  her 
mother  bought  and  gave  to  her  all  that  she  wished,  and  even 
for  a  beggar  she  drew  upon  her  mother's  pockets. 

"Then  she  doesn't  cost  you  much,"  commented  the  hatter. 

"That  is  what  you  think,  is  it?"  retorted  Sauviat.  "You 
wouldn't  do  it  on  less  than  forty  crowns  a  year.  You  should 
see  her  room !  There  is  a  hundred  crowns'  worth  of  furniture 
in  it ;  but  when  you  have  only  one  girl,  you  can  indulge  your- 
self;  and,  after  all,  what  little  we  have  will  all  be  hers  some 
day." 

"Little1?  You  must  be  rich,  Father  Sauviat.  These  forty 
years  you  have  been  in  a  line  of  business  where  there  are  no 
losses." 

"Oh,  they  shouldn't  cut  my  ears  off  for  a  matter  of  twelve 
hundred  francs,"  said  the  dealer  in  old  iron. 

From  the  day  when  Veronique  lost  the  delicate  beauty, 
which  every  one  had  admired  in  her  childish  face,  old  Sauviat 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  13 

had  worked  twice  as  hard  as  before.  His  business  revived 
again,  and  prospered  so  well,  that  he  went  to  Paris  not  once, 
but  several  times  a  year.  People  guessed  his  motives.  If 
his  girl  had  gone  off  in  looks,  he  would  make  up  for  it  in 
money,  to  use  his  own  language. 

When  Veronique  was  about  fifteen  another  change  was 
wrought  in  the  household  ways.  The  father  and  mother 
went  up  to  their  daughter's  room  of  an  evening,  and  listened 
while  she  read  aloud  to  them  from  the  Lives  of  the  Saints, 
or  the  Lettres  edifiantes,  or  from  some  other  book  lent  by 
the  curate  of  Saint-Etienne.  The  lamp  was  set  behind  a 
glass  globe  full  of  water,  and  Mother  Sauviat  knitted  indus- 
triously, thinking  in  this  way  to  pay  for  the  oil.  The  neigh- 
bors opposite  could  look  into  the  room  and  see  the  two  old 
people  sitting  there,  motionless  as  two  carved  Chinese  figures, 
listening  intently,  admiring  their  daughter  with  all  the  power 
of  an  intelligence  that  was  dim  enough  save  in  matters  of 
business  or  religion.  Doubtless  there  have  been  girls  as  pure 
as  Veronique — there  have  been  none  purer  nor  more  modest. 
Her  confession  surely  filled  the  angels  with  wonder,  and  glad- 
dened the  Virgin  in  Heaven.  She  was  now  sixteen  years  old, 
and  perfectly  developed;  you  beheld  in  her  the  woman  she 
would  be.  She  was  of  medium  height,  neither  the  father 
nor  the  mother  was  tall;  but  the  most  striking  thing  about 
her  figure  was  its  lissome  grace,  the  sinuous,  gracious  curves 
which  Nature  herself  traces  so  finely,  which  the  artist  strives 
so  painfully  to  render;  the  soft  contours  that  reveal  them- 
selves to  practised  eyes,  for  in  spite  of  folds  of  linen  and 
thickness  of  stuff,  the  dress  is  always  moulded  and  informed 
by  the  body.  Simple,  natural,  and  sincere,  Veronique  set 
this  physical  beauty  in  relief  by  her  unaffected  freedom  of 
movement.  She  produced  her  "'full  and  entire  effect,"  if  it 
is  permissible  to  make  use  of  the  forcible  legal  phrase.  She 
had  the  full-fleshed  arms  of  an  Auvergnate,  the  red,  plump 
hands  of  a  buxom  inn-servant,  and  feet  strongly  made,  but 
shapely,  and  in  proportion  to  her  height. 

Sometimes  there  was  wrought  in  her  an  exquisite  my&- 


14  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

terious  change;  suddenly  it  was  revealed  that  in  this  frame 
dwelt  a  woman  hidden  from  all  eyes  but  Love's.  Perhaps 
it  was  this  transfiguration  which  awakened  an  admiration  of 
her  beauty  in  the  father  and  mother,  who  astonished  the 
neighbors  by  speaking  of  it  as  something  divine.  The  first  to 
see  it  were  the  clergy  of  the  cathedral  and  the  communicants 
at  the  table  of  the  Lord.  When  Veronique's  face  was  lighted 
up  by  impassioned  feeling — and  the  mystical  ecstasy  which 
filled  her  at  such  times  is  one  of  the  strongest  emotions  in 
the  life  of  so  innocent  a  girl — it  seemed  as  if  a  bright  inner 
radiance  effaced  the  traces  of  the  smallpox,  and  the  pure, 
bright  face  appeared  once  more  in  the  first  beauty  of  child- 
hood. Scarcely  obscured  by  the  thin  veil  of  tissues  coarsened 
by  the  disease,  her  face  shone  like  some  flower  in  dim  places 
under  the  sea,  when  the  sunlight  strikes  down  and  invests  it 
with  a  mysterious  glory.  For  a  few  brief  moments  Veronique 
was  transfigured,  the  Little  Virgin  appeared  and  disappeared 
like  a  vision  from  Heaven.  The  pupils  of  her  eyes,  which 
possessed  in  a  high  degree  the  power  of  contracting,  seemed 
at  such  seasons  to  dilate  and  overspread  the  blue  of  the  iris, 
which  diminished  till  it  became  nothing  more  than  a  slender 
ring;  the  change  in  the  eyes,  which  thus  grew  piercing  as  the 
eagle's,  completing  the  wonderful  change  in  the  face.  Was 
it  a  storm  of  repressed  and  passionate  longing,  was  it  some 
power  which  had  its  source  in  the  depths  of  her  nature,  which 
made  those  eyes  dilate  in  broad  daylight  as  other  eyes  widen 
in  shadow,  darkening  their  heavenly  blue?  Whatever  the 
cause,  it  was  impossible  to  look  upon  Veronique  with  indif- 
ference as  she  returned  to  her  place  after  having  been  made 
one  with  God;  all  present  beheld  her  in  the  radiance  of  her 
early  beauty ;  at  such  times  she  would  have  eclipsed  the  fairest 
women  in  her  loveliness.  What  a  charm  for  a  jealous  lover  in 
that  veil  of  flesh  which  should  hide  his  love  from  all  other 
eyes;  a  veil  which  the  hand  of  Love  could  raise  to  let  fall 
again  upon  the  rapture  of  wedded  bliss.  Veronique's  lips, 
faultless  in  their  curves,  seemed  to  have  been  painted  scarlet, 
BO  richly  were  they  colored  by  the  pure  glow  of  the  blood. 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  15 

Her  chin  and  the  lower  part  of  her  face  were  a  little  full, 
in  the  sense  that  painters  give  to  the  word,  and  this  heaviness 
of  contour  is,  by  the  unalterable  laws  of  physiognomy,  a  cer- 
tain sign  of  a  capacity  for  almost  morbid  violence  of  passion. 
Her  finely  moulded  but  almost  imperious  brow  was  crowned 
by  a  glorious  diadem  of  thick  abundant  hair;  the  gold  had 
deepened  to  a  chestnut  tint. 

From  her  sixteenth  year  till  the  day  of  her  marriage 
Veronique's  demeanor  was  thoughtful  and  full  of  melancholy. 
In  an  existence  so  lonely  she  fell,  as  solitary  souls  are 
wont,  to  watching  the  grand  spectacle  of  the  life  within,  the 
progress  of  her  thoughts,  the  ever-changing  phantasmagoria 
of  mental  visions,  the  yearnings  kindled  by  her  pure  life. 
Those  who  passed  along  the  Eue  de  la  Cite  on  sunny  days 
had  only  to  look  up  to  see  the  Sauviats'  girl  sitting  at  her 
window  with*  a  bit  of  sewing  or  embroidery  in  her  hand, 
drawing  the  needle  in  and  out  with  a  somewhat  dreamy  air. 
Her  head  stood  out  in  sharp  contrast  against  its  background 
among  the  flowers  which  gave  a  touch  of  poetry  to  the  pro- 
saic, cracked,  brown  window-sill,  and  the  small  leaded  panes 
of  her  casement.  At  times  a  reflected  glow  from  the  red 
damask  curtains  added  to  the  effect  of  the  face  so  brightly 
colored  already;  it  looked  like  some  rosy-red  flower  above  the 
little  skyey  garden,  which  she  tended  so  carefully  upon  the 
ledge.  So  the  quaint  old  house  contained  something  still 
more  quaint — a  portrait  of  a  young  girl,  worthy  of  Mieris, 
Van  Ostade,  Terburg,  or  Gerard  Dow,  framed  in  one  of  the 
old,  worn,  and  blackened,  and  almost  ruinous  windows  which 
Dutch  artists  loved  to  paint.  If  a  stranger  happened  to 
glance  up  at  the  second  floor,  and  stand  agape  with  wonder 
at  its  construction,  old  Sauviat  below  would  thrust  out  his 
head  till  he  could  look  up  the  face  of  the  overhanging  story. 
He  was  sure  to  see  Veronique  there  at  the  window.  Then  he 
would  go  in  again,  rubbing  his  hands,  and  say  to  his  wife 
in  the  patois  of  Auvergne : 

"Hullo,  old  woman,  there  is  some  one  admiring  your  daugh- 
ter!" 


16  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

In  1820  an  event  occurred  in  Veronique's  simple  and  un- 
eventful life.  It  was  a  little  thing,  which  would  have  exer- 
cised no  influence  upon  another  girl,  but  destined  to  effect  a 
fatal  influence  on  Veronique's  future  life.  On  the  day  of  a 
suppressed  Church  festival,  a  working  day  for  the  rest  of 
the  town,  the  Sauviats  shut  their  shop  and  went  first  to  mass 
and  then  for  a  walk.  On  their  way  into  the  country  they 
passed  by  a  bookseller's  shop,  and  among  the  books  displayed 
outside  Veronique  saw  one  called  Paul  et  Virginie.  The  fancy 
took  her  to  buy  it  for  the  sake  of  the  engraving;  her  father 
paid  five  francs  for  the  fatal  volume,  and  slipped  it  into  the 
vast  pocket  of  his  overcoat. 

"Wouldn't  it  be  better  to  show  it  to  M.  le  Vicaire?"  asked 
the  mother;  for  her  any  printed  book  was  something  of  an 
abracadabra,  which  might  or  might  not  be  for  evil. 

"Yes,  I  thought  I  would,"  Veronique  answered  simply. 

She  spent  that  night  in  reading  the  book,  one  of  the  most 
touching  romances  in  the  French  language.  The  love  scenes, 
half-biblical,  and  worthy  of  the  early  ages  of  the  world, 
wrought  havoc  in  Veronique's  heart.  A  hand,  whether  dia- 
bolical or  divine,  had  raised  for  her  the  veil  which  hitherto 
had  covered  nature.  On  the  morrow  the  Little  Virgin  within 
the  beautiful  girl  thought  her  flowers  fairer  than  on  the  even- 
ing of  the  day  before;  she  understood  their  symbolical  lan- 
guage, she  gazed  up  at  the  blue  sky  with  exaltation,  causeless 
tears  rose  to  her  eyes. 

In  every  woman's  life  there  comes  a  moment  when  she 
understands  her  destiny,  or  her  organization,  hitherto  mute, 
speaks  with  authority.  It  is  not  always  a  man  singled  out 
by  an  involuntary  and  stolen  glance  who  reveals  the  possession 
of  a  sixth  sense,  hitherto  dormant ;  more  frequently  it  is  some 
sight  that  comes  with  the  force  of  a  surprise,  a  landscape,  a 
page  of  a  book,  some  day  of  high  pomp,  some  ceremony  of 
the  Church ;  the  scent  of  growing  flowers,  the  delicate  bright- 
ness of  a  misty  morning,  the  intimate  sweetness  of  divine 
music, — and  something  suddenly  stirs  in  body  or  soul.  For 
the  lonely  child,  a  prisoner  in  the  dark  house,  brought  up 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  17 

by  parents  almost  as  rough  and  simple  as  peasants;  for  the 
girl  who  had  never  heard  an  improper  word,  whose  innocent 
mind  had  never  received  the  slightest  taint  of  evil;  for  the 
angelic  pupil  of  Sister  Martha  and  of  the  good  curate  of 
Saint-F^tienne,  the  revelation  of  love  came  through  a  charm- 
ing book  from  the  hand  of  genius.  No  peril  would  have 
lurked  in  it  for  any  other,  but  for  her  an  obscene  work  would 
have  been  less  dangerous.  Corruption  is  relative.  There 
are  lofty  and  virginal  natures  which  a  single  thought  suffices 
to  corrupt,  a  thought  which  works  the  more  ruin  because  the 
necessity  of  combating  it  is  not  foreseen. 

The  next  day  Veronique  showed  her  book  to  the  good  priest, 
who  approved  the  purchase  of  a  work  so  widely  known  for 
its  childlike  innocence  and  purity.  But  the  heat  of  the  tropics, 
the  beauty  of  the  land  described  in  Paul  et  Virginie,  the 
almost  childish  innocence  of  a  love  scarcely  of  this  earth, 
had  wrought  upon  Veronique's  imagination.  She  was  capti- 
vated by  the  noble  and  sweet  personality  of  the  author,  and 
carried  away  towards  the  cult  of  the  Ideal,  that  fatal  religion. 
She  dreamed  of  a  lover,  a  young  man  like  Paul,  and  brooded 
over  soft  imaginings  of  that  life  of  lovers  in  some  fragrant 
island.  Below  Limoges,  and  almost  opposite  the  Faubourg 
Saint-Martial,  there  is  a  little  island  in  the  Vienne;  this, 
in  her  childish  fancy,  Veronique  called  the  Isle  of  France, 
and  filled  with  the  fantastic  creations  of  a  young  girl's 
dreams,  vague  shadows  endowed  with  the  dreamer's  own  per- 
fections. 

She  sat  more  than  ever  in  the  window  in  those  days,  and 
watched  the  workmen  as  they  came  and  went.  Her  parents' 
humble  position  forbade  her  to  think  of  any  one  but  an 
artisan;  yet,  accustomed  as  she  doubtless  was  to  the  idea  of 
becoming  a  working-man's  wife,  she  was  conscious  of  an 
instinctive  refinement  which  shrank  from  anything  rough 
or  coarse.  So  she  began  to  weave  for  herself  a  romance  such 
as  most  girls  weave  in  their  secret  hearts  for  themselves 
alone.  With  the  enthusiasm  which  might  be  expected  of  a 
refined  and  girlish  imagination,  she  seized  on  the  attractive 


18  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

idea  of  ennobling  one  of  these  working-men,  of  raising  him 
to  the  level  of  her  dreams.  She  made  (who  knows?)  a  Paul 
of  some  young  man  whose  face  she  saw  in  the  street,  simply 
that  she  might  attach  her  wild  fancies  to  some  human 
creature,  as  the  overcharged  atmosphere  of  a  winter  day 
deposits  dew  on  the  branches  of  a  tree  by  the  wayside,  for 
the  frost  to  transform  into  magical  crystals.  How  should 
she  escape  a  fall  into  the  depths?  for  if  she  often  seemed  to 
return  to  earth  from  far-off  heights  with  a  reflected  glory 
about  her  brows,  yet  oftener  she  appeared  to  bring  with  her 
flowers  gathered  on  the  brink  of  a  torrent-stream  which  she 
had  followed  down  into  the  abyss.  On  warm  evenings  she 
asked  her  old  father  to  walk  out  with  her,  and  never  lost 
an  opportunity  of  a  stroll  by  the  Vienne.  She  went  into 
ecstasy  at  every  step  over  the  beauty  of  the  sky  and  land, 
over  the  red  glories  of  the  sunset,  or  the  joyous  freshness 
of  dewy  mornings,  and  the  sense  of  these  things,  the  poetry 
of  nature,  passed  into  her  soul. 

She  curled  and  waved  the  hair  which  she  used  to  wear  in 
simple  plaits  about  her  head;  she  thought  more  about  her 
dress.  The  young,  wild  vine  which  had  grown  as  its  nature 
prompted  about  the  old  elm-tree  was  transplanted  and  trim- 
med and  pruned,  and  grew  upon  a  dainty  green  trellis. 

One  evening  in  December  1822,  when  Sauviat  (now  seventy 
years  old)  had  returned  from  a  journey  to  Paris,  the  curate 
dropped  in,  and  after  a  few  commonplaces: 

"You  must  think  of  marrying  your  daughter,  Sauviat," 
eaid  the  priest.  "At  your  age  you  should  no  longer  delay  the 
fulfilment  of  an  important  duty." 

"Why,  has  Veronique  a  mind  to  be  married?"  asked  the 
amazed  old  man. 

"As  you  please,  father,"  the  girl  answered,  lowering  her 
eyes. 

"We  will  marry  her,"  cried  portly  Mother  Sauviat,  smiling 
as  she  spoke. 

"Why  didn't  you  say  something  about  this  before  I  left 
home,  mother?"  Sauviat  asked.  "I  shall  have  to  go  back 
to  Paris  again." 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  19 

In  Jerome-Baptiste  Sauviat's  eyes,  plenty  of  money  ap- 
peared to  be  syiiQnymous  with  happiness.  He  had  always 
regarded  love  and  marriage  in  their  purely  physical  and 
practical  aspects;  marriage  was  a  means  of  transmitting  his 
property  (he  being  no  more)  to  another  self;  so  he  vowed 
that  Veronique  should  marry  a  well-to-do  man.  Indeed,  for 
a  long  while  past  this  had  become  a  fixed  idea  with  him.  His 
neighbor  the  hatter,  who  was  retiring  from  business,  and 
had  an  income  of  two  thousand  livres  a  year,  had  already 
asked  for  Veronique  for  his  son  and  successor  (for  Veronique 
was  spoken  of  in  the  quarter  as  a  good  girl  of  exemplary 
life),  and  had  been  politely  refused.  Sauviat  had  not  so 
much  as  mentioned  this  to  Veronique. 

The  curate  was  Veronique's  director,  and  a  great  man 
in  the  Sauviats'  eyes;  so  the  day  after  he  had  spoken  of 
Veronique's  marriage  as  a  necessity,  old  Sauviat  shaved  him- 
self, put  on  his  Sunday  clothes,  and  went  out.  He  said  not 
a  word  to  his  wife  and  daughter,  but  the  women  knew  that 
the  old  man  had  gone  out  to  find  a  son-in-law.  Sauviat  went 
to  M.  Graslin. 

M.  Graslin,  a  rich  banker  of  Limoges,  had  left  his  native 
Auvergne  like  Sauviat  himself,  without  a  sou  in  his  pocket. 
He  had  begun  life  as  a  porter  in  a  banker's  service,  and  from 
that  position  had  made  his  way,  like  many  another  capitalist, 
partly  by  thrift,  partly  by  sheer  luck.  A  cashier  at  five-and- 
twenty,  and  at  five-and-thirty  a  partner  in  the  firm  of  Ferret 
&  Grossetete,  he  at  last  bought  out  the  original  partners,  and 
became  sole  owner  of  the  bank.  His  two  colleagues  went  to 
live  in  the  country,  leaving  their  capital  in  his  hands  at  a  low 
rate  of  interest.  Pierre  Graslin,  at  the  age  of  forty-seven,  was 
believed  to  possess  six  hundred  thousand  francs  at  the  least. 
His  reputation  for  riches  had  recently  increased,  and  the 
whole  department  had  applauded  his  free-handedness  when 
he  built  a  house  for  himself  in  the  new  quarter  of  the  Place 
des  Arbres,  which  adds  not  a  little  to  the  appearance  of 
Limoges.  It  was  a  handsome  house,  on  the  plan  of  alignment, 
with  a  f agade  like  a  neighboring  public  building ;  but  though 


20  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

the  mansion  had  been  finished  for  six  months,  Pierre  Graslin 
hesitated  to  furnish  it.  His  house  had  cost  him  so  dear,  that 
at  the  thought  of  living  in  it  he  drew  back.  Self-love,  it  may 
be,  had  enticed  him  to  exceed  the  limits  he  had  prudent!} 
observed  all  his  life  long ;  he  thought,  moreover,  with  the  plain 
sense  of  a  man  of  business,  that  it  was  only  right  that  the 
inside  of  his  house  should  be  in  keeping  with  the  programme 
adopted  with  the  facade.  The  plate  and  furniture  and  acces- 
sories needed  for  the  house-keeping  in  such  a  mansion  would 
cost  more,  according  to  his  computations,  than  the  actual 
outlay  on  the  building.  So,  in  spite  of  the  town  gossip,  the 
broad  grins  of  commercial  circles,  and  the  charitable  surmises 
of  his  neighbors,  Pierre  Graslin  stayed  where  he  was  on  the 
damp  and  dirty  ground-floor  dwelling  in  the  Hue  Montant- 
manigne,  where  his  fortune  had  been  made,  and  the  great 
house  stood  empty.  People  might  talk,  but  Graslin  was 
happy  in  the  approbation  of  his  two  old  sleeping  partners, 
who  praised  him  for  displaying  such  uncommon  strength  of 
mind. 

Such  a  fortune  and  such  a  life  as  Graslin's  is  sure  to  excite 
plentiful  covetousness  in  a  country  town.  During  the  past 
ten  years  more  than  one  proposition  of  marriage  had  been 
skilfully  insinuated.  But  the  estate  of  a  bachelor  was  emi- 
nently suited  to  a  man  who  worked  from  morning  to  night, 
overwhelmed  with  business,  and  wearied  by  his  daily  round, 
a  man  as  keen  after  money  as  a  sportsman  after  game;  so 
Graslin  had  fallen  into  none  of  the  snares  set  for  him  by 
ambitious  mothers  who  coveted  a  brilliant  position  for  their 
daughters.  Graslin,  the  Sauviat  of  a  somewhat  higher  social 
sphere,  did  not  spend  two  francs  a  day  upon  himself,  and 
dressed  no  better  than  his  second  clerk.  His  whole  staff 
consisted  of  a  couple  of  clerks  and  an  office-boy,  though  he 
went  through  an  amount  of  business  which  might  fairly  be 
called  immense,  so  multitudinous  were  its  ramifications.  One 
of  the  clerks  saw  to  the  correspondence,  the  other  kept  the 
books ;  and  for  the  rest  Pierre  Graslin  was  both  the  soul  and 
body  of  his  business.  He  chose  his  clerks  from  his  family 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  21 

circle;  they  were  of  his  own  stamp,  trustworthy,  intelligent, 
and  accustomed  to  work.  As  for  the  office-boy,  he  led  the  life 
of  a  dray  horse. 

Graslin  rose  all  the  year  round  before  five  in  the  morning, 
and  was  never  in  bed  till  eleven  o'clock  at  night.  His  char- 
woman, an  old  Auvergnate,  who  came  in  to  do  the  housework 
and  to  cook  his  meals,  had  strict  orders  never  to  exceed  the 
sum  of  three  francs  for  the  total  daily  expense  of  the  house- 
hold. The  brown  earthenware,  the  strong  coarse  tablecloths 
and  sheets,  were  in  keeping  with  the  manners  and  customs 
of  an  establishment  in  which  the  porter  was  the  man-of-all- 
work,  and  the  clerks  made  their  own  beds.  The  blackened 
deal  tables,  the  ragged  straw-bottomed  chairs  with  the  holes 
through  the  centre,  the  pigeon-hole  writing-desks  and  ram- 
shackle bedsteads,  in  fact,  all  the  furniture  of  the  counting- 
house  and  the  three  rooms  above  it,  would  not  have  fetched 
three  thousand  francs,  even  if  the  safe  had  been  included,  a 
colossal  solid  iron  structure  built  into  the  wall  itself,  before 
which  the  porter  nightly  slept  with  a  couple  of  dogs  at  his 
feet.  It  had  been  a  legacy  from  the  old  firm  to  the  present 
one. 

Graslin  was  not  often  seen  in  society,  where  a  great  deal 
was  heard  about  him.  He  dined  with  the  Eeceiver- General 
(a  business  connection)  two  or  three  times  a  year,  and  he  had 
been  known  to  take  a  meal  at  the  prefecture ;  for,  to  his  own 
intense  disgust,  he  had  been  nominated  a  member  of  the 
general  council  of  the  department.  "He  wasted  his  time 
there,"  he  said.  Occasionally,  when  he  had  concluded  a 
bargain  with  a  business  acquaintance,  he  was  detained  to 
lunch  or  dinner;  and  lastly,  he  was  sometimes  compelled  to 
call  upon  his  old  patrons  who  spent  the  winter  in  Limoges. 
So  slight  was  the  hold  which  social  relations  had  upon  him, 
that  at  twenty-five  years  of  age  Graslin  had  not  so  much 
as  offered  a  glass  of  water  to  any  creature. 

People  used  to  say,  "That  is  M.  Graslin !"  when  he  passed 
along  the  street,  which  is  to  say,  "There  is  a  man  who  came 
to  Limoges  without  a  farthing,  and  has  made  an  immense 
-3 


22  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

amount  of  money."  The  Auvergnat  banker  became  a  kind  of 
pattern  and  example  held  up  by  fathers  of  families  to  their 
offspring — and  an  epigram  which  more  than  one  wife  cast 
in  her  husband's  teeth.  It  is  easy  to  imagine  the  motives 
which  induced  this  principal  pivot  in  the  financial  machinery 
of  Limoges  to  repel  the  matrimonial  advances  rfo  persever- 
ingly  made  to  him.  The  daughters  of  Messieurs  Ferret  and 
Grossetete  had  been  married  before  Graslin  was  in  a  position 
to  ask  for  them ;  but  as  each  of  these  ladies  had  daughters  in 
the  schoolroom,  people  let  Graslin  alone  at  last,  taking  it  for 
granted  that  either  old  Ferret  or  Grossetete  the  shrewd  had 
arranged  a  match  to  be  carried  out  some  future  day,  when 
Graslin  should  be  bridegroom  to  one  of  the  granddaughters. 

Sauviat  had  watched  his  fellow-countryman's  rise  and 
progress  more  closely  than  any  one.  He  had  known  Graslin 
ever  since  he  came  to  Limoges,  but  their  relative  positions  had 
changed  so  much  (in  appearance  at  any  rate)  that  the  friend- 
ship became  an  acquaintance,  renewed  only  at  long  intervals. 
Still,  in  his  quality  of  fellow-countryman,  Graslin  was  never 
above  having  a  chat  with  Sauviat  in  the  Auvergne  dialect 
if  the  two  happened  to  meet,  and  in  their  own  language 
they  dropped  the  formal  "you'?  for  the  more  familiar  "thee" 
and  "thou." 

In  1823,  when  the  youngest  of  the  brothers  Grossetete, 
the  Eeceiver-General  of  Bourges,  married  his  daughter  to  the 
youngest  son  of  the  Comte  de  Fontaine,  Sauviat  saw  that  the 
Grossetetes  had  no  mind  to  take  Graslin  into  the  family. 

After  a  conference  with  the  banker,  old  Sauviat  returned 
in  high  glee  to  dine  in  his  daughter's  room. 

"Veronique  will  be  Madame  Graslin,"  he  told  the  two 
women. 

"Madame  Graslin!"  cried  Mother  Sauviat,  in  amazement. 

"Is  it  possible?"  asked  Veronique.  She  did  not  know  Gras- 
lin by  sight,  but  the  name  produced  much  such  an  effect  on 
her  imagination  as  the  word  Rothschild  upon  a  Parisian  shop- 
girl. 

"Yes.      It   is   settled,"   old    Sauviat   continued   solemnly. 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  23 

"Graslin  will  furnish  his  house  very  grandly;  he  will  have 
the  finest  carriage  from  Paris  that  money  can  buy  for  our 
daughter,  and  the  best  pair  of  horses  in  Limousin.  He  will 
buy  an  estate  worth  five  hundred  thousand  francs  for  her, 
and  settle  the  house  on  her  besides.  In  short,  Veronique 
will  be  the  first  lady  in  Limoges,  and  the  richest  in  the  de- 
partment, and  can  do  just  as  she  likes  with  Graslin." 

Veronique's  boundless  affection  for  her  father  and  mother, 
her  bringing-up,  her  religious  training,  her  utter  ignorance, 
prevented  her  from  raising  a  single  objection;  it  did  not  so 
much  as  occur  to  her  that  she  had  been  disposed  of  without 
her  own  consent.  The  next  day  Sauviat  set  out  for  Paris, 
and  was  away  for  about  a  week. 

Pierre  Graslin,  as  you  may  imagine,  was  no  great  talker; 
he  went  straight  to  the  point,  and  acted  promptly.  A  thing 
determined  upon  was  a  thing  done  at  once.  So  in  February 
1822  a  strange  piece  of  news  surprised  Limoges  like  a  sudden 
thunder-clap.  Graslin's  great  house  was  being  handsomely 
furnished.  Heavy  wagon-loads  from  Paris  arrived  daily 
to  be  unpacked  in  the  courtyard.  Eumors  flew  about  the 
town  concerning  the  good  taste  displayed  in  the  beautiful  fur- 
niture, modern  and  antique.  A  magnificent  service  of  plate 
came  down  from  Odiot's  by  the  mail;  and  (actually)  three 
carriages ! — a  caleche,  a  brougham,  and  a  cabriolet  arrived 
carefully  packed  in  straw  as  if  they  had  been  jewels. 

"M.  Graslin  is  going  to  be  married!"  The  words  passed 
from  mouth  to  mouth,  and  in  the  course  of  a  single  evening 
the  news  filtered  through  the  drawing-rooms  of  the  Limousin 
aristocracy  to  the  back  parlors  and  shops  in  the  suburbs,  till 
all  Limoges  in  fact  had  heard  it.  But  whom  was  he  going 
to  marry?  Nobody  could  answer  the  question.  There  was 
a  mystery  in  Limoges. 

As  soon  as  Sauviat  came  back  from  Paris,  Graslin  made 
his  first  nocturnal  visit,  at  half-past  nine  o'clock.  Veronique 
knew  that  he  was  coming.  She  wore  her  blue  silk  gown,  cut 
square  at  the  throat,  and  a  wide  collar  of  cambric  with  a  deep 
hem.  Her  hair  she  had  simply  parted  into  two  bandeaux, 


24  THE  COUNTR1   PARSON 

waved  and  gathered,  into  a  Grecian  knot  at  the  back  of  hei 
head.  She  was  sitting  in  a  tapestry-covered  chair  near  the 
fireside,  where  her  mother  occupied  a  great  armchair  with 
a  carved  back  and  crimson  velvet  cushions,  a  bit  of  salvage 
from  some  ruined  chateau.  A  blazing  fire  biirned  on  the 
hearth.  Upon  the  mantel-shelf,  on  either  side  of  an  old 
clock  (whose  value  the  Sauviats  certainly  did  not  know), 
stood  two  old-fashioned  sconces;  six  wax-candles  in  the  sock- 
ets among  the  brazen  vine-stems  shed  their  light  on  the  brown 
chamber,  and  on  Veronique  in  her  bloom.  The  old  mother 
had  put  on  her  best  dress. 

In  the  midst  of  the  silence  that  reigned  in  the  streets  at 
that  silent  hour,  with  the  dimly-lit  staircase  as  a  background, 
Graslin  appeared  for  the  first  time  before  Veronique — the 
shy  childish  girl  whose  head  was  still  full  of  sweet  fancies 
of  love  derived  from  Bernardin  de  Saint-Pierre's  book.  Gras- 
lin was  short  and  thin.  His  thick  black  hair  stood  up  straight 
on  his  forehead  like  bristles  in  a  brush,  in  startling  contrast 
with  a  face  red  as  a  drunkard's,  and  covered  with  suppurating 
or  bleeding  pustules.  The  eruption  was  neither  scrofula  nor 
leprosy,  it  was  simply  a  result  of  an  overheated  condition 
of  the  blood;  unflagging  toil,  anxiety,  fanatical  application 
to  business,  late  hours,  a  life  steady  and  sober  to  the  point 
of  abstemiousness,  had  induced  a  complaint  which  seemed 
to  be  related  to  both  diseases.  In  spite  of  partners,  clerks, 
and  doctors,  the  banker  had  never  brought  himself  to  submit 
to  a  regimen  which  might  have  alleviated  the  symptoms  or 
cured  an  evil,  trifling  at  first,  which  was  daily  aggravated 
by  neglect  as  time  went  on.  He  wished  to  be  rid  of  it,  and 
sometimes  for  a  few  days  would  take  the  baths  and  swallow 
the  doses  prescribed;  but  the  round  of  business  carried  him 
away,  and  he  forgot  to  take  care  of  himself.  Xow  and  again 
he  would  talk  of  going  away  for  a  short  holiday,  and  trying 
the  waters  somewhere  or  other  for  a  cure,  but  where  is  the 
man  in  hot  pursuit  of  millions  who  has  been  known  to  stop? 
In  this  flushed  countenance  gleamed  two  gray  eyes,  the  iris 
speckled  with  brown  dots  and  streaked  with  fine  green 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  25 

threads  radiating  from  the  pupil — two  covetous  eyes,  piercing 
eyes  that  went  to  the  depths  of  the  heart,  implacable  eyes  in 
which  you  read  resolution  and  integrity  and  business  faculty. 
A  snub  nose,  thick  blubber  lips,  a  prominent  rounded  fore- 
head, grinning  cheek-bones,  coarse  ears  corroded  by  the  sour 
humors  of  the  blood — altogether  Graslin  looked  like  an  an- 
tique satyr — a  satyr  tricked  out  in  a  great  coat,  a  black  satin 
waistcoat,  and  a  white  neckcloth  knotted  about  his  neck.  The 
strong  muscular  shoulders,  which  had  once  carried  heavy 
burdens,  stooped  somewhat  already;  the  thin  legs,  which 
seemed  to  be  imperfectly  jointed  with  the  short  thighs,  trem- 
bled beneath  the  weight  of  that  over-developed  torso.  The 
bony  fingers  covered  with  hair  were  like  claws,  as  is  often  the 
case  with  those  who  tell  gold  all  day  long.  Two  parallel  lines 
furrowed  the  face  from  the  cheek-bones  to  the  mouth,  an  un- 
erring sign  that  here  was  a  man  whose  whole  soul  was  taken  up 
with  material  interests ;  while  the  eyebrows  sloped  up  towards 
the  temples  in  a  manner  which  indicated  a  habit  of  swift 
decision.  Grim  and  hard  though  the  mouth  looked,  there  was 
something  there  that  suggested  an  underlying  kindliness,  real 
good-heartedness,  not  called  forth  in  a  life  of  money-getting, 
and  choked,  it  may  be,  by  cares  of  this  world,  but  which 
might  revive  at  contact  with  a  woman. 

At  sight  of  this  apparition,  something  clutched  cruelly  at 
Veronique's  heart.  Everything  grew  dark  before  her  eyes. 
She  thought  she  cried  out,  but  in  reality  she  sat  still,  mute, 
staring  with  fixed  eyes. 

"Veronique,"  said  old  Sauviat,  "this  is  M.  Graslin." 
Veronique  rose  to  her  feet  and  bowed,  then  she  sank  down 
into  her  chair  again,  and  her  eyes  sought  her  mother.  But 
La  Sauviat  was  smiling  at  the  millionaire,  looking  so  happy, 
so  very  happy,  that  the  poor  child  gathered  courage  to  hide 
her  violent  feeling  of  repulsion  and  the  shock  she  had  re- 
ceived. In  the  midst  of  the  conversation  which  followed, 
something  was  said  about  Graslin's  health.  The  bankei- 
looked  naively  at  himself  in  the  beveled  mirror  framed  in 
ebony. 


26  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

"I  am  not  handsome,  mademoiselle,"  he  said,  as  he  ex- 
plained that  the  redness  of  his  face  was  due  to  his  busy  life, 
and  told  them  how  he  had  disobeyed  his  doctor's  orders.  He 
hoped  that  as  soon  as  he  had  a  woman  to  look  after  him  and 
his  household,  a- wife  who  would  take  more  care  of  him  than 
he  took  of  himself,  he  should  look  quite  a  different  man. 

"As  if  anybody  married  a  man  for  his  looks,  mate !"  cried 
the  dealer  in  old  iron,  slapping  his  fellow-countryman  on 
the  thigh. 

Graslin's  explanation  appealed  to  instinctive  feelings  which 
more  or  less  fill  every  woman's  heart.  Veronique  bethought 
herself  of  her  own  face,  marred  by  a  hideous  disease,  and  in 
her  Christian  humility  she  thought  better  of  her  first  impres- 
sion. Just  then  some  one  whistled  on  the  street  outside, 
Graslin  went  down,  followed  by  Sauviat,  who  felt  uneasy. 
Both  men  soon  returned.  The  porter  had  brought  the  first 
bouquet  of  flowers,  which  had  been  in  readiness  for  the  occa- 
sion. At  the  reappearance  of  the  banker  with  this  stack  of 
exotic  blossoms,  which  he  offered  to  his  future  bride,  Vero- 
nique's  feelings  were  very  different  from  those  with  which 
she  had  first  seen  Graslin  himself.  The  room  was  filled  with 
the  sweet  scent,  for  Veronique  it  was  the  realization  of  her 
day-dreams  of  the  tropics.  She  had  never  seen  white  camellias 
before,  had  never  known  the  scent  of  the  Alpine  cytisus,  the 
exquisite  fragrance  of  the  citronella,  the  jessamine  of  the 
Azores,  the  verbena  and  musk-rose,  and  their  sweetness,  like 
a  melody  in  perfume,  falling  on  her  senses  stirred  a  vague 
tenderness  in  her  heart. 

Graslin  left  Veronique  under  the  spell  of  that  emotion; 
but  almost  nightly  after  Sauviat  returned  home,  the  banker 
waited  till  all  Limoges  was  asleep,  and  then  slunk  along  under 
the  walls  to  the  house  where  the  dealer  in  old  iron  lived.  He 
used  to  tap  softly  on  the  shutters,  the  dog  did  not  bark,  the 
old  man  came  down  and  opened  the  door  to  his  fellow-coun- 
tryinan,  and  Graslin  would  spend  a  couple  of  hours  in  the 
brown  ^oom  where  Veronique  sat,  and  Mother  Sauviat  would 
serve  him  up  an  Auvergnat  supper.  The  uncouth  lover  never 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  27 

came  without  a  bouquet  for  Veronique,  rare  flowers  only  to 
be  procured  in  M.  Grossetete's  hothouse,  M.  Grossetete  being 
the  only  person  in  Limoges  in  the  secret  of  the  marriage.  The 
porter  went  after  dark  to  fetch  the  bouquet,  which  old  Grosse- 
tete always  gathered  himself. 

During  those  two  months,  Graslin  went  about  fifty  times  to 
the  house,  and  never  without  some  handsome  present,  rings, 
a  gold  watch,  a  chain,  a  dressing-case,  or  the  like;  amazing 
lavishness  on  his  part,  which,  however,  is  easily  explained. 

Veronique  would  bring  him  almost  the  whole  of  her  father's 
fortune — she  would  have  seven  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
francs.  The  old  man  kept  for  himself  an  income  of  eight 
thousand  francs,  an  old  investment  in  the  Funds,  made  when 
he  was  in  imminent  danger  of  losing  his  head  on  the  scaffold. 
In  those  days  he  had  put  sixty  thousand  francs  in  assignats 
(the  half  of  his  fortune)  into  Government  stock.  It  was 
Brezac  who  had  advised  the  investment,  and  dissuaded  him 
afterwards  when  he  thought  of  selling  out;  it  was  Brezac, 
too,  who  in  the  same  emergency  had  been  a  faithful  trustee 
for  the  rest  of  his  fortune — the  vast  sum  of  seven  hundred 
gold  louis,  with  which  Sauviat  began  to  speculate  as  scon  as 
he  made  good  his  escape  from  prison.  In  thirty  years'  time 
each  of  those  gold  louis  had  been  transmuted  into  a  bill  for  a 
thousand  francs,  thanks  partly  to  the  .interest  on  the  as- 
signats, partly  to  the  money  which  fell  in  at  the  time  of  Cham- 
pagnac's  death,  partly  to  trading  gains  in  the  business,  and 
to  the  money  standing  at  compound  interest  in  Brezac's  con- 
cern. Brezac  had  done  honestly  by  Sauviat,  as  Auvergnat 
does  by  Auvergnat.  And  so  whenever  Sauviat  went  to  take 
a  look  at  the  front  of  Graslin's  great  house : 

"Veronique  shall  live  in  that  palace !"  he  said  to  himself. 

He  knew  that  there  was  not  another  girl  in  Limousin  who 
would  have  seven  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  francs  paid 
down  on  her  marriage  day;  beside  two  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 
sand of  expectations.  Graslin,  the  son-in-law  of  his  choice, 
must  therefore  inevitably  marry  Veronique.  So  every  evening 
Veronique  received  a  bouquet,  which  daily  made  her  little 


28  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

sitting-room  bright  with  flowers,  a  bouquet  care  fully  kept  out 
of  sight  of  the  neighbors.  She  admired  the  beautiful  jewels, 
the  rubies,  pearls,  and  diamonds,  the  bracelets,  dear  to  all 
daughters  of  Eve,  and  thought  "herself  less  ugly  thus  adorned. 
She  saw  her  mother  happy  over  this  marriage,  and  she  herself 
had  no  standard  of  comparison;  she  had  no  idea  what  mar- 
riage meant,  no  conception  of  its  duties;  and  finally,  she 
heard  the  curate  of  Sairt-Eticnne  praising  Graslin  to  her, 
in  his  solemn  voice,  telling  her  that  this  was  an  honorable 
man  with  whom  she  would  lead  an  honorable  life.  So  Vero- 
nique  consented  to  receive  M.  Graslin's  attentions.  In  a 
lonely  and  monotonous  life  like  hers,  let  a  single  person  pre- 
sent himself  day  by  day,  and  before  long  that  person  will  not 
be  indifferent;  for  either  an  aversion,  confirmed  by  a  deeper 
knowledge,  will  turn  to  hate,  and  the  visitor's  presence  will 
be  intolerable;  or  custom  stales  (so  to  speak)  the  sight  of 
physical  defects,  and  then  the  mind  begins  to  look  for  com- 
pensations. Curiosity  busies  itself  with  the  face ;  from  some 
cause  or  other  the  features  light  up,  there  is  some  fleeting 
gleam  of  beauty  there ;  and  at  last  the  nature,  hidden  beneath 
the  outward  form,  is  discovered.  In  short,  first  impressions 
once  overcome,  the  force  with  which  the  one  soul  is  attracted 
to  the  other  is  but  so  much  the  stronger,  because  the  discovery 
of  the  true  nature  of  the  other  is  all  its  own.  So  love  begins. 
Herein  lies  the  secret  of  the  passionate  love  which  beautiful 
persons  entertain  for  others  who  are  not  beautiful  in  appear 
ance;  affection,  looking  deeper  than  the  outward  form,  sees 
the  form  no  longer,  but  a  soul,  and  thenceforward  knows 
nothing  else.  Moreover,  the  beauty  so  necessary  in  a  woman 
takes  in  a  man  such  a  strange  character,  that  women's 
opinions  differ  as  much  on  the  subject  of  a  man's  good  looks 
as  men  about  the  beauty  of  a  woman. 

After  much  meditation  and  many  struggles  with  herself, 
Veronique  allowed  the  banns  to  be  published,  and  all  Limoges 
rang  with  the  incredible  news.  Nobody  knew  the  secret — the 
bride's  immense  dowry.  If  that  had  been  bruited  abroad. 
Veronique  might  have  chosen  her  husband,  but  perhaps  even 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  29 

so  would  have  been  mistaken.  It  was  a  love-match  on  Gras- 
lin's  side,  people  averred. 

Upholsterers  arrived  from  Paris  to  furnish  the  fine  house. 
The  banker  was  going  to  great  expense  over  it,  and  nothing 
else  was  talked  of  in  Limoges.  People  discussed  the  price 
of  the  chandeliers,  the  gilding  of  the  drawing-room,  the 
mythical  subjects  of  the  timepieces;  and  there  were  well- 
informed  folk  who  could  describe  the  flower-stands  and  the 
porcelain  stoves,  the  luxurious  novel  contrivances.  For  in- 
stance, there  was  an  aviary  built  above  the  ice-house  in  the 
garden  of  the  Hotel  Graslin;  all  Limoges  marveled  at  the 
rare  birds  in  it — the  paroquets,  and  Chinese  pheasants,  and 
strange  water-fowl,  there  was  no  one  who  had  not  seen  them. 

M.  and  Mme.  Grossetete,  old  people  much  looked  up  to  in 
Limoges,  called  several  times  upon  the  Sauviats,  Graslin  ac- 
companying them.  Mme.  Grossetete,  worthy  woman,  con- 
gratulated Veronique  on  the  fortunate  marriage  she  was  to 
make;  so  the  Church,  the  family,  and  the  world,  together 
with  every  trifling  circumstance,  combined  to  bring  this  match 
about. 

In  the  month  of  April,  formal  invitations  were  sent  to  all 
Graslin's  circle  of  acquaintance.  At  eleven  o'clock  one  fine 
sunny  morning  a  caleche  and  a  brougham,  drawn  by  Limousin 
horses  in  English  harness  (old  Grossetete  had  superintended 
his  colleague's  stable),  arrived  before  the  poor  little  shop 
where  the  dealer  in  old  iron  lived;  and  the  excited  quarter 
beheld  the  bridegroom's  sometime  partners  and  his  two  clerks. 
There  was  a  prodigious  sensation,  the  street  was  filled  by  the 
crowd  eager  to  see  the  Sauviats'  daughter.  The  most  cele- 
brated hairdresser  in  Limoges  had  set  the  bride's  crown  on 
her  beautiful  hair  and  arranged  her  veil  of  priceless  Brussels 
lace;  but  Veronique's  dress  was  of  simple  white  muslin.  A 
sufficiently  imposing  assembly  of  the  most  distinguished  wo- 
men of  Limoges  was  present  at  the  wedding  in  the  cathedral ; 
the  Bishop  himself,  knowing  the  piety  of  the  Sauviats,  con- 
descended to  perform  the  marriage  ceremony.  People  thought 
the  bride  a  plain-looking  girl.  For  the  first  time  she  entered 


30  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

her  hotel,  and  went  from  surprise  to  surprise.  A  state  dinner 
preceded  the  ball,  to  which  Graslin  had  invited  almost  all 
Limoges.  The  dinner  given  to  the  Bishop,  the  prefect,  the 
president  of  the  court  of  first  instance,  the  public  prosecutor, 
the  mayor,  the  general,  and  to  Graslin's  sometime  employers 
and  their  wives,  was  a  triumph  for  the  bride,  who,  like  all 
simple  and  unaffected  people,  proved  unexpectedly  charming. 
None  of  the  married  people  would  dance,  so  that  Veronique 
continued  to  do  the  honors  of  her  house,  and  won  the  esteem 
and  good  graces  of  most  of  her  new  acquaintances ;  asking  old 
Grossetete,  who  had  taken  a  great  kindness  for  her,  for  infor- 
mation about  her  guests,  and  so  avoiding  blunders.  During 
the  evening  the  two  retired  bankers  spread  the  news  of  the 
fortune,  immense  for  Limousin,  which  the  parents  of  the 
bride  had  given  her.  At  nine  o'clock  the  dealer  in  old  iron 
went  home  to  bed,  leaving  his  wife  to  preside  at  the  ceremony 
of  undressing  the  bride.  It  was  said  in  the  town  that  Mme. 
Graslin  was  plain  but  well  shaped. 

Old  Sauviat  sold  his  business  and  his  house  in  the  town, 
and  bought  a  cottage  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Vienne,  between 
Limoges  and  Le  Cluzeau,  and  ten  minutes'  walk  from  the 
Faubourg  Saint-Martial.  Here  he  meant  that  he  and  his 
wife  should  end  their  days  in  peace.  The  two  old  people  had 
rooms  in  Graslin's  hotel,  and  dined  there  once  or  twice  a 
week  with  their  daughter,  whose  walks  usually  took  the  direc- 
tion of  their  house. 

The  retired  dealer  in  old  iron  had  nothing  to  do,  and  nearly 
died  of  leisure.  Luckily  for  him,  his  son-in-law  found  him 
gome  occupation.  In  1823  the  banker  found  himself  with  a 
porcelain  factory  on  his  hands.  He  had  lent  large  sums  to  the 
manufacturers,  which  they  were  unable  to  repay,  so  he  had 
taken  over  the  business  to  recoup  himself.  In  this  concern 
he  invested  more  capital,  and  by  this  means,  and  by  his  ex- 
tensive business  connections,  made  of  it  one  of  the  largest 
factories  in  Limoges;  so  that  when  he  sold  it  in  three  years 
after  he  took  it  over,  he  made  a  large  profit  on  the  transaction. 
He  made  his  father-in-law  the  manager  of  this  factory,  situ- 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  31 

ated  in  the  very  same  quarter  of  Saint-Martial  where  his 
house  stood;  and  in  spite  of  Sauviat's  seventy-two  years,  he 
had  done  not  a  little  in  bringing  about  the  prosperity  of  a 
business  in  which  he  grew  quite  young  again.  The  plan  had 
its  advantages  likewise  for  Graslin;  but  for  old  Sauviat,  who 
threw  himself  heart  and  soul  into  the  porcelain  factory,  he 
would  have  been  perhaps  obliged  to  take  a  clerk  into  partner- 
ship and  lose  part  of  the  profits,  which  he  now  received  in 
full;  but  as  it  was,  he  could  look  after  his  own  affairs  in  the 
town,  and  feel  his  mind  at  ease  as  to  the  capital  invested  in  the 
porcelain  works. 

In  1827  Sauviat  met  with  an  accident,  which  ended  in  his 
death.  He  was  busy  with  the  stock-taking,  when  he  stumbled 
over  one  of  the  crates  in  which  the  china  was  packed,  grazing 
his  leg  slightly.  He  took  no  care  of  himself,  and  mortification 
set  in;  they  talked  of  amputation,  but  he  would  not  hear  of 
losing  his  leg,  and  so  he  died.  His  widow  made  over  about 
two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  francs,  the  amount  of  Sau- 
viat's estate,  to  her  daughter  and  son-in-law,  Graslin  under- 
taking to  pay  her  two  hundred  francs  a  month,  an  amount 
amply  sufficient  for  her  needs.  She  persisted  in  living  on 
without  a  servant  in  the  little  cottage ;  keeping  her  point  with 
the  obstinacy  of  old  age,  and  in  spite  of  her  daughter's  en- 
treaties; but,  on  the  other  hand,  she  went  almost  every  day 
to  the  Hotel  Graslin,  and  Veronique's  walks,  as  heretofore, 
usually  ended  at  her  mother's  house.  There  was  a  charming 
view  from  the  windows  of  the  river  and  the  little  island  in 
the  Vienne,  which  Veronique  had  loved  in  the  old  days,  and 
called  her  Isle  of  France. 

The  story  of  the  Sauviats  has  been  anticipated  partly  to 
save  interruption  to  the  other  story  of  the  Graslins'  household, 
partly  because  it  serves  to  explain  some  of  the  reasons  of  the 
retired  life  which  Veronique  Graslin  led.  The  old  mother 
foresaw  how  much  her  child  might  one  day  be  made  to  suffer 
through  Graslin's  avarice;  for  long  she  held  out,  and  refused 
to  give  up  the  rest  -of  her  fortune,  and  only  gave  way  when 
Veronique  insisted  upon  it.  Veronique  was  incapable  of  im- 


32  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

agining  circumstances  in  which  a  wife  desires  to  have  the 
control  of  her  property,  and  acted  upon  a  generous  impulse; 
in  this  way  she  meant  to  thank  Graslin  for  giving  her  back 
her  liberty. 

The  unaccustomed  splendors  of  Graslin's  marriage  has  been 
totally  at  variance  with  his  habits  and  nature.  The  great 
capitalist's  ideas  were  very  narrow.  Veronique  had  had  no 
opportunity  of  gauging  the  man  with  whom  she  must  spend 
the  rest  of  her  life.  During  those  fifty-five  evening  visits 
Graslin  had  shown  but  one  side  of  his  character — the  man  of 
business,  the  undaunted  worker  who  planned  and  carried  out 
large  undertakings,  the  capitalist  who  looked  at  public  affairs 
with  a  view  to  their  probable  effect  on  the  bank  rate  and 
opportunities  of  money-making.  And,  under  the  influence 
of  his  father-in-law's  million,  Graslin  had  behaved  generously 
in  those  days,  though  even  then  his  lavish  expenditure  was 
made  to  gain  his  own  ends;  he  was  drawn  into  expense  in  the 
springtide  days  of  his  marriage  partly  by  the  possession  of  the 
great  house,  which  he  called  his  "Folly,"  the  house  still  called 
the  Hotel  Graslin  in  Limoges. 

As  he  had  the  horses,  the  caleche,  and  brougham,  it  was 
natural  to  make  use  of  them  to  pay  a  round  of  visits  on  his 
marriage,  and  to  go  to  the  dinner-parties  and  dances  given 
in  honor  of  the  bride  by  official  dignitaries  and  wealthy 
houses.  Acting  on  the  impulses  which  carried  him  out  of  his 
ordinary  sphere,  Graslin  was  "at  home"  to  callers  one  day  in 
the  week,  and  sent  to  Paris  for  a  cook.  For  about  a  year  in- 
deed he  led  the  ordinary  life  of  a  man  who  has  seventeen  hun- 
dred thousand  francs  of  his  own,  and  can  command  a  capital 
of  three  millions.  He  had  come  to  be  the  most  conspicuous 
personage  in  Limoges.  During  that  year  he  generously  al- 
lowed Mme.  Graslin  twenty-five  twenty-franc  pieces  every 
month. 

Veronique  on  her  marriage  had  become  a  person  of  great 
interest  to  the  rank  and  fashion  of  Limoges;  she  was  a  kind 
of  godsend  to  the  idle  curiosity  which  finds  such  meagre  sus- 
tenance in  the  provinces.  Veronique,  who  had  so  suddenly 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  38 

• 

made  her  appearance,  was  a  phenomenon  the  more  closely 
scrutinized  on  that  account;  but  she  always  maintained  the 
simple  and  unaffected  attitude  of  an  onlooker  who  watches 
manners  and  usages  unknown  to  her,  and  seeks  to  conform 
to  them.  From  the  first  she  had  been  pronounced  to  have  a 
good  figure  and  a  plain  face,  and  now  it  was  decided  that 
she  was  good-natured,  but  stupid.  She  was  learning  so  many 
things  at  once,  she  had  so  much  to  see  and  to  hear,  that  her 
manner  and  talk  gave  some  color  to  this  accusation.  A  sort 
of  torpor,  moreover,  had  stolen  over  her  which  might  well  be 
mistaken  for  stupidity.  Marriage,  that  "difficult  profession" 
of  wifehood,  as  she  called  it,  in  which  the  Church,  the  Code, 
and  her  own  mother  bade  her  practise  the  most  complete  res- 
ignation and  perfect  obedience,  under  pain  of  breaking  all 
laws  human  and  divine,  and  bringing  about  irreparable  evils ; 
marriage  had  plunged  her  into  a  bewilderment  which  grew  to 
the  pitch  of  vertigo  and  delirium.  While  she  sat  silent  and 
reserved,  she  heard  her  own  thoughts  as  plainly  as  the  voices 
about  her.  For  her  "existence"  had  come  to  be  extremely  "dif- 
ficult," to  use  the  phrase  of  the  dying  Fontenelle,  and  ever 
more  increasingly,  till  she  grew  frightened,  she  was  afraid 
of  herself.  Nature  recoiled  from  the  orders  of  the  soul; 
the  body  rebelled  against  the  wilL  The  poor  snared  creature 
wept  on  the  bosom  of  the  great  Mother  of  the  sorrowful  and 
afflicted;  she  betook  herself  to  the  Church,  she  redoubled  her 
fervor,  she  confided  to  her  director  the  temptations  which 
assailed  her,  she  poured  out  her  soul  in  prayer.  Never  at  any 
time  in  her  life  did  she  fufil  her  religious  duties  so  zealously. 
The  tempest  of  despair  which  filled  her  when  she  knew  that 
she  did  not  love  her  husband,  flung  her  at  the  foot  of  the 
altar,  where  divine  comforting  voices  spoke  to  her  of  patience. 
And  she  was  patient  and  sweet,  living  in  hope  of  the  joys  of 
motherhood. 

"Did  you  see  Mme.  Graslin  this  morning?"  the  women 
asked  among  themselves.  "Marriage  does  not  agree  with  her; 
she  looked  quite  ghastly." 

"Yes;  but  would  you  have  given  a  daughter  of  yours  to  a 


34  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

• 

man  like  M.  Graslin.  Of  course,  if  you  marry  such  a  monster, 
you  suffer  for  it." 

As  soon  as  Graslin  was  fairly  married,  all  the  mothers  who 
had  assiduously  hunted  him  for  the  past  ten  years  directed 
spiteful  speeches  at  him.  Veronique  grew  thin,  and  became 
plain  in  good  earnest.  Her  eyes  were  heavy,  her  features 
coarsened,  she  looked  shamefaced  and  embarrassed,  and  wore 
the  dreary,  chilling  expression,  so  repellant  in  bigoted  devo- 
tees. A  grayish  tint  overspread  her  complexion.  She  dragged 
herself  languidly  about  during  the  first  year  of  her  marriage, 
usually  the  heyday  of  a  woman's  life.  Before  very  long  she 
sought  for  distraction  in  books,  making  use  of  her  privilege 
as  a  married  woman  to  read  everything.  She  read  Scott's 
novels,  Byron's  poems,  the  works  of  Schiller  and  Goethe,  lit- 
erature ancient  and  modern.  She  learned  to  ride,  to  dance, 
and  draw.  She  made  sepia  drawings  and  sketches  in  water- 
color,  eager  to  learn  every  device  which  women  use  to  while 
away  the  tedium  of  solitary  hours ;  in  short,  that  second  edu- 
cation which  a  woman  nearly  always  undertakes  for  a  man's 
sake  and  with  his  guidance,  she  undertook  alone  and  for  her- 
self. 

In  the  loftiness  of  a  nature  frank  and  free,  brought  up, 
as  it  were,  in  the  desert,  but  fortified  by  religion,  there  was 
a  wild  grandeur,  cravings  which  found  no  satisfaction  in  the 
provincial  society  in  which  she  moved.  All  the  books  described 
love;  she  looked  up  from  her  books  on  life,  and  found  no 
traces  of  passion  there.  Love  lay  dormant  in  her  heart  like 
the  germs  which  wait  for  the  sun.  Through  a  profound 
melancholy,  caused  by  constant  brooding  over  herself,  she 
came  by  dim  and  winding  ways  back  to  the  last  bright 
dreams  of  her  girlhood.  She  dwelt  more  than  once  on 
the  old  romantic  imaginings,  and  became  the  heroine  and 
the  theatre  of  the  drama.  Once  again  she  saw  the  island 
bathed  in. light,  full  of  blossom  and  sweet  scents,  and  all 
things  grateful  to  her  soul. 

Not  seldom  her  sad  eyes  wandered  over  her  rooms  with 
searching  curiosity;  the  men  she  saw  were  all  like  Graslin; 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  35 

she  watched  them  closely,  and  seemed  to  turn  questioningly 
from  them  to  their  wives;  but  on  the  women's  faces  she  saw 
no  sign  of  her  own  secret  trouble,  and  sadly  and  wearily  she  re- 
turned to  her  starting-point,  uneasy  about  herself.  Her  high- 
est thoughts  met  with  a  response  in  the  books  which  she  read 
of  a  morning,  their  wit  pleased  her;  but  in  the  evening  she 
heard  nothing  but  commonplace  thoughts,  which  no  one  at- 
tempted to  disguise  by  giving  a  witty  turn  to  them ;  the  talk 
around  her  was  vapid  and  empty,  or  ran  upon  gossip  and  local 
news,  which  had  no  interest  for  her.  She  wondered  sometimes 
at  the  warmth  of  discussions  in  which  there  was  no  question 
of  sentiment,  for  her  the  very  core  of  life.  She  was  often  seen 
gazing  before  her  with  fixed,  wide  eyes,  thinking,  doubtless, 
of  hours  which  she  had  spent,  while  still  a  girl  ignorant  of 
life,  in  the  room  where  everything  had  been  in  keeping  with 
her  fancies,  and  now  laid  in  ruins,  like  Veronique's  own  ex- 
istence. She  shrank  in  pain  from  the  thought  of  being  drawn 
into  the  eddy  of  petty  cares  and  interests  like  the  other  women 
among  whom  she  was  forced  to  live ;  her  ill-concealed  disdain 
of  the  littleness  of  her  lot,  visible  upon  her  lips  and  brow, 
was  taken  for  upstart  insolence. 

Mme.  Graslin  saw  the  coolness  upon  all  faces,  and  felt  a 
certain  bitter  tone  in  the  talk.  She  did  not  understand  the 
reason,  for  as  yet  she  had  not  made  a  friend  sufficiently  inti- 
mate to  enlighten  or  counsel  her.  Injustice,  under  which 
small  natures  chafe,  compels  loftier  souls  to  return  within 
themselves,  and  induces  in  them  a  kind  of  humility.  Vero- 
nique  blamed  herself,  and  tried  to  discover  where  the  fault 
lay.  She  tried  to  be  gracious,  she  was  pronounced  to  be  insin- 
cere; she  redoubled  her  kindliness,  and  was  said  to  be  a 
hypocrite  (her  devotion  giving  color  to  the  slander) ;  she  was 
lavish  of  hospitality,  and  gave  dinners  and  dances,  and  was 
accused  of  pride.  All  Mme.  Graslin's  efforts  were  unsuccess- 
ful. She  was  misjudged  and  repulsed  by  the  petty  querulous 
pride  of  provincial  coteries,  where  susceptibilities  are  always 
upon  the  watch  for  offences;  she  went  no  more  into  society, 
and  lived  in  the  strictest  retirement.  The  love  in  her  heart 


36  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

turned  to  the  Church.  The  great  spirit  in  its  feeble  house  of 
flesh  saw  in  the  manifold  behests  of  Catholicism  but  so  many 
stones  set  by  the  brink  of  the  precipices  of  life,  raised  there 
by  charitable  hands  to  prop  human  weakness  by  the  way. 
So  every  least  religious  observance  was  practised  with  the 
most  punctilious  care. 

Upon  this,  the  Liberal  party  added  Mme.  Graslin's  name 
to  the  list  of  bigots  in  the  town.  She  was  classed  among  the 
Ultras,  and  party  spirit  strengthened  the  various  grudges 
which  Veronique  had  innocently  stored  up  against  herself, 
with  its  periodical  exacerbations.  But  as  she  had  nothing 
to  lose  by  this  ostracism,  she  went  no  more  into  society,  and 
betook  herself  to  her  books,  with  the  infinite  resources  which 
they  opened  to  her.  She  thought  over  her  reading,  she  com- 
pared methods,  she  increased  the  amount  of  her  actual  knowl- 
edge and  her  power  of  acquiring  it,  and  by  so  doing  opened 
the  gateways  of  her  mind  to  curiosity. 

It  was  at  this  period  of  close  and  persistent  study,  while 
religion  supported  her,  that  she  gained  a  friend  in  M.  Grosse- 
tete,  an  old  man  whose  real  ability  had  not  grown  so  rusty 
in  the  course  of  a  life  in  a  country  town  but  that  contact  with 
a  keen  intelligence  could  still  draw  a  few  sparks  from  it.  The 
kind  soul  was  deeply  interested  in  Veronique,  who,  in  return 
for  the  mild  warmth  of  the  mellowed  affection  which  age 
alone  can  give,  put  forth  all  the  treasures  of  her  soul ;  for 
him  the  splendid  powers  cultivated  in  secret  first  blossomed 
forth. 

A  fragment  of  a  letter  written  at  this  time  to  M.  Grossetete 
will  describe  the  mental  condition  of  a  woman  who  one  day 
should  give  proof  of  a  firm  temper  and  lofty  nature: — 

"The  flowers  which  you  sent  to  me  for  the  dance  were  very 
lovely,  yet  they  suggested  painful  thoughts.  The  sight  of 
that  beauty,  gathered  by  you  to  decorate  a  festival,  and  to 
fade  on  my  breast  and  in  my  hair,  made  me  think  of  other 
flowers  born  to  die  unseen  in  your  woods,  to  shed  sweet  scent 
that  no  one  breathes.  Then  I  asked  myself  why  I  was  danc- 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  37 

ing,  why  I  had  decked  myself  with  flowers,  just  as  I  ask  God 
why  I  am  here  in  the  world.  You  see,  my  friend,  that  in 
everything  there  lurks  a  snare  for  the  unhappy,  just  as  the 
drollest  trifles  bring  the  sick  back  to  their  own  sufferings. 
That  is  the  worst  of  some  troubles :  they  press  upon  us  so  con- 
stantly that  they  shape  themselves  into  an  idea  which  is  ever 
present  in  our  minds.  An  ever-present  trouble  ought  surely 
to  be  a  hallowed  thought.  You  love  flowers  for  their  own 
sake;  I  love  them  as  I  love  beautiful  music.  As  I  once  told 
you,  the  secret  of  a  host  of  things  is  hidden  from  me.  .  .  . 
You,  my  old  friend,  for  instance,  have  a  passion  for  garden- 
ing. When  you  come  back  to  town,  teach  me  to  share  in  this 
taste  of  yours;  send  me  with  a  light  footstep  to  my  hothouse 
to  feel  the  interest  which  you  take  in  watching  your  plants 
grow.  You  seem  to  me  to  live  and  blossom  with  them,  to 
take  a  delight  in  them,  as  in  something  of  your  own  creation; 
to  discover  new  colors,  novel  splendors,  which  come  forth 
under  your  eyes,  the  result  of  your  labors.  I  feel  that  the 
emptiness  of  my  life  is  breaking  my  heart.  For  me,  my  hot- 
house is  full  of  pining  souls.  The  distress  which  I  force 
myself  to  relieve  saddens  my  very  soul.  I  find  some  young 
mother  without  linen  for  her  new-born  babe,  some  old  man 
starving,  I  make  their  troubles  mine,  and  even  when  I  have 
helped  them,  the  feelings  aroused  in  me  by  the  sight  of  misery 
relieved  are  not  enough  to  satisfy  my  soul.  Oh !  my  friend, 
I  feel  that  I  have  great  powers  asserting  themselves  in  me, 
powers  of  doing  evil,  it  may  be,  which  nothing  can  crush — 
powers  that  the  hardest  commandments  of  religion  cannot 
humble.  When  I  go  to  see  my  mother,  when  I  am  quite  alone 
among  the  fields,  I  feel  that  I  must  cry  aloud,  and  I  cry.  My 
body  is  the  prison  in  which  one  of  the  evil  genii  has  pent 
up  some  moaning  creature,  until  the  mysterious  word  shall 
be  uttered  which  shatters  the  cramping  cell.  But  this  com- 
parison is  not  just.  In  my  case  it  should  be  reversed.  It 
is  the  body  which  is  a  prisoner,  if  I  may  make  use  of  the  ex- 
pression. Does  not  religion  occupy  my  soul?  And  the 
treasures  gained  by  reading  are  constant  food  for  the  mind. 
4 


38  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

Why  do  I  long  for  any  change,  even  if  it  comes  as  suffering — 
for  any  break  in  the  enervating  peace  of  my  lot?  Unless 
I  find  some  sentiment  to  uphold  me,  some  strong  interest 
to  cultivate,  I  feel  that  I  shall  drift  towards-the  abyss  where 
every  idea  grows  hazy  and  meaningless,  where  character  is 
enervated,  where  the  springs  of  one's  being  grow  slack  and 
inert,  where  I  shall  be  no  longer  the  woman  Nature  intended 
me  to  be.  That  is  what  my  cries  mean.  .  .  .  But  you 
will  not  cease  to  send  flowers  to  me  because  of  this  outcry  of 
mine?  Your  friendship  has  been  so  sweet  and  pleasant  a 
thing,  that  it  has  reconciled  me  with  myself  for  several 
months.  Yes,  I  feel  happy  when  I  think  that  you  sometimes 
throw  a  friendly  glance  over  the  blossoming  desert-place,  my 
inner  self;  that  the  wanderer,  half  dead  after  her  flight  on 
the  fiery  steed  of  a  dream,  will  meet  with  a  kind  word  of 
greeting  from  you  on  her  return." 

Three  years  after  Veronique's  marriage,  it  occurred  to 
Graslin  that  his  wife  never  used  the  horses,  and,  a  good 
opportunity  offering  itself,  he  sold  them.  The  carriages 
were  sold  at  the  same  time,  the  coachman  was  dismissed,  and 
the  cook  from  Paris  transferred  to  the  Bishop's  establishment. 
A  woman  servant  took  his  place.  Graslin  ceased  to  give  his 
wife  an  allowance,  saying  that  he  would  pay  all  the  bills.  He 
was  the  happiest  man  in  the  world  when  he  met  with  no 
opposition  from  the  wife  who  had  brought  him  a  million. 
There  was  not  much  credit,  it  is  true,  in  Mme.  Graslin's  self- 
denial.  She  knew  nothing  of  money,  she  had  been  brought  up 
in  ignorance  of  it  as  an  indispensable  element  in  life.  Graslin 
found  the  sums  which  he  had  given  to  her  lying  in  a  corner 
of  her  desk;  scarcely  any  of  it  had  been  spent.  Veronique 
gave  to  the  poor,  her  trousseau  had  been  so  large  that  as  yet 
she  had  had  scarcely  any  expenses  for  dress.  Graslin  praised 
Veronique  to  all  Limoges  as  the  pattern  of  wives. 

The  splendor  of  the  furniture  gave  him  pangs,  so  he  had 
it  all  shrouded  in  covers.  His  wife's  bedroom,  boudoir,  and 
dressing-room  alone  escaped  this  dispensation,  an  economical 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  39 

measure  which  economized  nothing,  for  the  wear  and  tear 
to  the  furniture  is  the  same,  covers  or  no  covers. 

He  next  took  up  his  abode  on  the  ground  floor,  where  the 
counting-house  and  office  had  been  established,  so  he  began 
his  old  life  again,  and  was  as  keen  in  pursuit  of  gain  as  before. 
The  Auvergnat  banker  thought  himself  a  model  husband 
because  he  breakfasted  and  dined  with  his  wife,  who  carefully 
ordered  the  meals  for  him;  but  he  was  so  extremely  unpunc- 
tual,  that  he  came  in  at  the  proper  hour  scarce  ten  times  a 
month ;  and  though,  out  of  thoughtf ulness,  he  asked  her  never 
to  wait  for  him,  Veronique  always  stayed  to  carve  for  him ;  she 
wanted  to  fulfil  her  wifely  duties  in  some  one  visible  manner. 
His  marriage  had  not  been  a  matter  to  which  the  banker  gave 
much  thought ;  his  wife  represented  the  sum  of  seven  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  francs;  he  had  not  discovered  that  that 
wife  shrank  from  him.  Gradually  he  had  left  Mme.  Graslin 
to  herself,  and  became  absorbed  in  business ;  and  when  he  took 
it  into  his  head  to  have  a  bed  put  for  him  in  a  room  next  to 
his  private  office,  Veronique  saw  that  his  wishes  were  carried 
out  at  once. 

So  after  three  years  of  marriage  this  ill-assorted  couple 
went  their  separate  ways  as  before,  and  felt  glad  to  return  to 
them.  The  capitalist,  owner  now  of  eighteen  hundred  thou- 
sand francs,  returned  to  his  occupation  of  money-making  with 
all  the  more  zest  after  the  brief  interval.  His  two  clerks  and 
the  office-boy  were  somewhat  better  lodged  and  a  little  better 
fed — that  was  all  the  difference  between  the  past  and  the  pres- 
ent. His  wife  had  a  cook  and  a  waiting-maid  (the  two  ser- 
vants could  not  well  be  dispensed  with),  and  no  calls  were 
made  on  Graslin's  purse  except  for  strict  necessaries. 

And  Veronique  was  happy  in  the  turn  things  had  taken; 
she  saw  in  the  banker's  satisfaction  a  compensation  for  a 
separation  for  which  she  had  never  asked;  it  was  impossible 
that  Graslin  should  shrink  from  her  as  she  shrank  from  him. 
She  was  half  glad,  half  sorry  of  this  secret  divorce;  she  had 
looked  forward  to  motherhood,  which  should  bring  a  new  in- 
terest into  her  life ;  but  in  spite  of  their  mutual  resignation, 
there  was  no  child  of  the  marriage  as  yet  in  1828. 


40  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

So  Mme.  Graslin,  envied  by  all  Limoges,  led  as  lonely  a 
life  in  her  splendid  home  as  formerly  in  her  father's  hovel; 
but  the  hopes  and  the  childish  joys  of  inexperience  were  gone. 
She  lived  in  the  ruins  of  her  "castles  in  Spain,"  enlightened 
by  sad  experience,  sustained  by  a  devout  faith,  busying  her- 
self for  the  poor  of  the  district,  whom  she  loaded  with  kind- 
nesses. She  made  baby-linen  for  them;  she  gave  sheets  and 
bedding  to  those  who  lay  on  straw ;  she  went  everywhere  with 
her  maid — a  good  Auvergnate  whom  her  mother  found  for 
her.  This  girl  attached  herself  body  and  soul  to  her  mistress, 
and  became  a  charitable  spy  for  her,  whose  mission  it  was  to 
find  out  trouble  to  soothe  and  distress  to  relieve.  This  life  of 
busy  benevolence  and  of  punctilious  performance  of  the  duties 
enjoined  by  the  Church  was  a  hidden  life,  only  known  by  the 
cures  of  the  town  who  directed  it,  for  Veronique  took  their 
counsel  in  all  that  she  did,  so  that  the  money  intended  for  the 
deserving  poor  should  not  be  squandered  by  vice. 

During  these  years  Veronique  found  another  friendship 
quite  as  precious  to  her  and  as  warm  as  her  friendship  with 
old  Grossetete.  She  became  one  of  the  flock  of  the  Abbe 
Dutheil,  one  of  the  vicars-general  of  the  diocese.  This  priest 
belonged  to  the  small  minority  among  the  French  clergy  who 
lean  towards  concession,  who  would  fain  associate  the  Church 
with  the  popular  cause.  By  putting  evangelical  principles 
in  practice,  the  Church  should  gain  her  old  ascendency  over 
the  people,  whom  she  could  then  bind  to  the  Monarchy.  But 
the  Abbe  Dutheil's  merits  were  unrecognized,  and  he  was  per- 
secuted. Perhaps  he  had  seen  that  it  was  hopeless  to  attempt 
to  enlighten  the  Court  of  Borne  and  the  clerical  party;  per- 
haps he  had  sacrificed  his  convictions  at  the  bidding  of  his 
superiors;  at  any  rate,  he  dwelt  within  the  limits  of  the  strict- 
est orthodoxy,  'knowing  the  while  that  the  mere  expression  of 
his  convictions  would  close  his  way  to  a  bishopric.  A  great 
and  Christian  humility,  blended  with  a  lofty  character,  dis- 
tinguished this  eminent  churchman.  He  had  neither  pride 
nor  ambition,  and  stayed  at  his  post,  doing  his  duty  in  the 
midst  of  peril.  The  Liberal  party  in  the  town,  who  knew 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  41 

nothing  of  his  motives,  quoted  his  opinions  in  support  of 
their  own,  and  reckoned  him  as  "a  patriot,"  a  word  which 
means  "a  revolutionary"  for  good  Catholics.  He  was  beloved 
by  those  below  him,  who  did  not  dare  to  praise  his  worth; 
dreaded  by  his  equals,  who  watched  him  narrowly;  and  a 
thorn  in  the  side  of  his  bishop.  He  was  not  exactly  perse- 
cuted, his  learning  and  virtues  were  too  well  known;  it  was 
impossible  to  find  fault  with  him  freely,  though  he  criticised 
the  blunders  in  policy  by  which  the  Throne  and  the  Church 
alternately  compromised  each  other,  and  pointed  out  the  inev- 
itable results ;  like  poor  Cassandra,  he  was  reviled  by  his  own 
party  before  and  after  the  fall  which  he  predicted.  Nothing 
short  of  a  Eevolution  was  likely  to  shake  the  Abbe  Dutheil 
from  his  place;  he  was  a  foundation  stone  in  the  Church,  an 
unseen  block  of  granite  on  which  everything  else  rests.  His 
utility  was  recognized,  and — he  was  left  in  his  place,  like 
most  of  the  real  power  of  which  mediocrity  is  jealous  and 
afraid.  If,  like  the  Abbe  de  Lamennais,  he  had  taken  up  the 
pen,  he  would  probably  have  shared  his  fate ;  at  him,  too,  the 
thunderbolts  of  Home  would  have  been  launched. 

In  person  the  Abbe  Dutheil  was  commanding.  Something 
in  his  appearance  spoke  of  a  soul  so  profound  that  the  surface 
is  always  calm  and  smooth.  His  height  and  spare  frame  did 
not  mar  the  general  effect  of  the  outlines  of  his  figure,  which 
vaguely  recalled  those  forms  which  Spanish  painters  loved 
best  to  paint  for  great  monastic  thinkers  and  dreamers — • 
forms  which  Thorvaldsen  in  our  own  time  has  selected  for  his 
Apostles.  His  face,  with  the  long,  almost  austere  lines  in  it, 
which  bore  out  the  impression  made  by  the  straight  folds  of 
his  garments,  possessed  the  same  charm  which  the  sculptors 
of  the  Middle  Ages  discovered  and  recorded  in  the  mystic 
figures  about  the  doorways  of  their  churches.  His  grave 
thoughts,  grave  words,  and  grave  tones  were  all  in  keeping, 
and  the  expression  of  the  Abbe's  personality.  At  the  first 
sight  of  the  dark  eyes,  which  austerity  had  surrounded  with 
hollow  shadowy  circles;  the  forehead,  yellowed  like  old  mar- 
ble; the  bony  outlines  of  the  head  and  hands,  no  one  could 


42  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

have  expected  to  hear  any  voice  but  his,  or  any  teaching  but 
that  which  fell  from  his  lips.  It  was  this  purely  physical  gran- 
deur, in  keeping  with  the  moral  grandeur  of  his  nature,  that 
gave  him  a  certain  seeming  haughtiness  and  aloofness,  belied, 
it  is  true,  by  his  humility  and  his  talk,  yet  unprepossessing 
in  the  first  instance.  In  a  higher  position  these  qualities 
would  have  been  advantages  which  would  have  enabled  him 
to  gain  a  necessary  ascendency  over  the  crowd — an  ascendency 
which  it  is  quick  to  feel  and  to  recognize ;  but  he  was  a  subor- 
dinate, and  a  man's  superiors  never  pardon  him  for  possessing 
the  natural  insignia  of  power,  the  majesty  so  highly  valued 
in  an  older  time,  and  often  so  signally  lacking  in  modern 
upholders  of  authority. 

His  colleague,  the  Abbe  de  Grancour,  the  other  vicar- 
general  of  the  diocese,  a  blue-eyed  stout  little  man  with  a 
florid  complexion,  worked  willingly  enough  with  the  Abbe 
Dutheil,  albeit  their  opinions  were  diametrically  opposed ; 
a  curious  phenomenon,  which  only  a  wily  courtier  will  regard 
as  a  natural  thing ;  but,  at  the  same  time,  the  Abbe  de  Gran- 
cour was  very  careful  not  to  commit  himself  in  any  way 
which  might  cost  him  the  favor  of  his  bishop;  the  little  man 
would  have  sacrificed  anything  (even  convictions)  to  stand 
well  in  that  quarter.  He  had  a  sincere  belief  in  his  colleague, 
he  recognized  his  ability ;  in  private  he  admitted  his  doctrines, 
while  he  condemned  them  in  public ;  for  men  of  his  kind  are 
attracted  to  a  powerful  character,  while  they  fear  and  hate 
the  superiority  whose  society  they  cultivate.  "He  would  put 
his  arms  round  my  neck  while  he  condemned  me,"  said  the 
Abbe  Dutheil.  The  Abbe  de  Grancour  had  neither  friends 
nor  enemies,  and  was  like  to  die  a  vicar-general.  He  gave 
out  that  he  was  drawn  to  Veronique's  house  by  a  wish  to  give 
a  woman  so  benevolent  and  so  devout  the  benefit  of  his  coun- 
sels, and  the  Bishop  signified  his  approval;  but,  in  reality, 
he  was  only  too  delighted  to  spend  an  evening  now  and  then 
in  this  way  with  the  Abbe  Dutheil. 

From  this  time  forward  both  priests  became  pretty  con- 
stant visitors  in  Veronique's  house;  they  used  to  bring  her 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  48 

a  sort  of  general  report  of  any  distress  in  the  district,  and 
talk  over  the  best  means  of  benefiting  the  poor  morally  and 
materially;  but  year  by  year  M.  Graslin  drew  the  purse- 
strings  closer  and  closer;  for,  in  spite  of  ingenious  excuses 
devised  by  his  wife  and  Aline  the  maid,  he  suspected  that  all 
the  money  was  not  required  for  expenses  of  dress  and  house- 
keeping. He  grew  angry  at  last  when  he  reckoned  up  the 
amount  which  his  wife  gave  away.  He  himself  would  go 
through  the  bills  with  the  cook,  he  went  minutely  into  the  de- 
tails of  their  expenditure,  and  showed  himself  the  great  admin- 
istrator that  he  was  by  demonstrating  conclusively  from  his 
own  experience  that  it  was  possible  to  live  in  luxury  on  three 
thousand  francs  per  annum.  Whereupon  he  compounded  the 
matter  with  his  wife  by  allowing  her  a  hundred  francs  a 
month,  to  be  duly  accounted  for,  pluming  himself  on  the 
royal  bounty  of  the  grant.  The  garden,  now  handed  over  to 
him,  was  "done  up"  of  a  Sunday  by  the  porter,  who  had  a 
liking  for  gardening.  After  the  gardener  was  dismissed,  the 
conservatory  was  turned  to  account  as  a  warehouse,  where 
Graslin  deposited  the  goods  left  with  him  as  security  for 
small  loans.  The  birds  in  the  aviary  above  the  ice-house 
were  left  to  starve,  to  save  the  expense  of  feeding  them ; 
and  when  at  length  a  winter  passed  without  a  single  frost, 
he  took  that  opportunity  of  declining  to  pay  for  ice  any 
longer.  By  the  year  1828  every  article  of  luxury  was  cur- 
tailed, and  parsimony  reigned  undisturbed  in  the  Hotel 
Graslin. 

During  the  first  three  years  after  Graslin's  marriage,  with 
his  wife  at  hand  to  make  him  follow  out  the  doctor's  instruc- 
tions, his  complexion  had  somewhat  improved;  now  it  in- 
flamed again,  and  became  redder  and  more  florid  than  in 
the  past.  So  largely,  at  the  same  time,  did  his  business  in- 
crease, that  the  porter  was  promoted  to  be  a  clerk  (as  his 
master  had  been  before  him),  and  another  Auvergnat  had  to 
be  found  to  do  the  odd  jobs  of  the  Hotel  Graslin. 

After  four  years  of  married  life  the  woman  who  had  so 
xmch  wealth  bad  not  three  francs  to  call  her  own.  To  the 


44  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

niggardliness  of  her  parents  succeeded  the  no  less  niggardly 
dispensation  of  her  husband;  and  Mme.  Graslin,  whose 
benevolent  impulses  were  checked,  felt  the  need  of  money  for 
the  first  time. 

In  the  beginning  of  the  year  1828  Veronique  had  recov- 
ered the  bloom  of  health  which  had  lent  such  beauty  to  the 
innocent  girl  who  used  to  sit  at  the  window  in  the  old  house 
in  the  Eue  de  la  Cite.  She  had  read  widely  since  those  days ; 
she  had  learned  to  think  and  to  express  her  thoughts;  the 
habit  of  forming  accurate  judgments  had  lent  profundity  to 
her  features.  The  little  details  of  social  life  had  become 
familiar  to  her,  she  wore  a  fashionable  toilette  with  the  most 
perfect  ease  and  grace.  If  chance  brought  her  into  a  draw- 
ing-room at  this  time,  she  found,  not  without  surprise,  that 
she  was  received  with  something  like  respectful  esteem;  this 
way  of  regarding  her,  like  her  reception,  was  due  to  the  two 
vicars-general  and  old  Grossetete.  The  Bishop  and  one  or 
two  influential  people,  hearing  of  Veronique's  unwearying 
benevolence,  had  talked  about  this  fair  life  hidden  from  the 
world,  this  violet  perfumed  with  virtues,  this  blossom  of  un- 
feigned piety.  So,  all  unknown  to  Mme.  Graslin,  a  revolu- 
tion had  been  wrought  in  her  favor;  one  of  those  reactions 
so  much  the  more  lasting  and  sure  because  they  are  slowly 
effected.  With  this  right-about-face  in  opinion  Veronique 
became  a  power  in  the  land.  Her  drawing-room  was  the  re- 
sort of  the  luminaries  of  Limoges;  the  practical  change  was 
brought  about  by  this  means. 

The  young  Vicomte  de  Granville  came  to  the  town  at  the 
end  of  that  year  preceded  by  the  ready-made  reputation  which 
awaits  a  Parisian  on  his  arrival  in  the  provinces.  He  had 
been  appointed  deputy  public  prosecutor  to  the  Court  of 
Limoges.  A  few  days  after  his  arrival  he  said,  in  answer  to 
a  sufficiently  silly  question,  that  Mme.  Graslin  was  the 
cleverest,  most  amiable,  and  most  distinguished  woman  in 
the  city,  and  this  at  the  prefect's  "At  Home,"  and  before  a 
whole  room  full  of  people. 

"And  the  most  beautiful  as  well,  perhaps?"  suggested  the 
Receiver-General's  wife. 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  45 

"There  I  do  not  venture  to  agree  with  you,"  he  answered; 
"when  you  are  present  I  am  unable  to  decide.  Mme.  Gras- 
lin's  beauty  is  not  of  a  kind  which  should  inspire  jealousy  in 
you;  she  never  appears  in  broad  daylight.  Mme.  Graslin  is 
only  beautiful  for  those  whom  she  loves ;  you  are  beautiful  for 
all  eyes.  If  Mme.  Graslin  is  deeply  stirred,  her  face  is  trans- 
formed by  its  expression.  It  is  like  a  landscape,  dreary  in 
winter,  glorious  in  summer.  Most  people  only  see  it  in  win- 
ter; but  if  you  watch  her  while  she  talks  with  her  friends 
on  some  literary  or  philosophical  subject,  or  upon  some  re- 
ligious question  which  interests  her,  her  face  lights  up,  and 
suddenly  she  becomes  another  woman,  a  woman  of  wonder- 
ful beauty." 

This  declaration,  a  recognition  of  the  same  beautiful  trans- 
figuration which  Veronique's  face  underwent  as  she  returned 
to  her  place  from  the  communion  table,  made  a  sensation  in 
Limoges,  for  the  new  substitute  (destined,  it  was  said,  to  be 
Attorney-General  one  day)  was  the  hero  of  tHe  hour.  In 
every  country  town  a  man  a  little  above  the  ordinary  level 
becomes  for  a  shorter  or  longer  time  the  subject  of  a  craze, 
a  sham  enthusiasm  to  which  the  idol  of  the  moment  falls  a 
victim.  To  these  freaks  of  the  provincial  drawing-room  we 
owe  the  local* genius  and  the  person  who  suffers  from  the 
chronic  complaint  of  unappreciated  superiority.  Sometimes 
it  is  native  talent  which  women  discover  and  bring  into 
fashion,  but  more  frequently  it  is  some  outsider ;  and  for  once, 
in  the  case  of  the  Vicomte  de  Granville,  the  homage  was  paid 
to  genuine  ability. 

The  Parisian  found  that  Mme.  Graslin  was  the  only  woman 
with  whom  he  could  exchange  ideas  or  carry  on  a  sustained 
and  varied  conversation;  and  a  few  months  after  his  arrival, 
as  the  charm  of  her  talk  and  manner  gained  upon  him,  he 
suggested  to  some  of  the  prominent  men  in  the  town,  and  to 
the  Abbe  Dutheil  among  them,  that  they  might  make  their 
party  at  whist  of  an  evening  in  Mme.  Graslin's  drawing- 
room.  So  Veronique  was  at  home  to  her  friends  for  five 
nights  in  the  week  (two  days  she  wished  to  keep  free,  she  said, 


46  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

for  her  own  concerns)  ;  and  when  the  cleverest  men  in  the 
town  gathered  about  Mme.  Graslin,  others  were  not  sorry  to 
take  brevet  rank  as  wits  by  spending  their  evenings  in  her 
society.  Veronique  received  the  two  or  three  distinguished 
military  men  stationed  in  the  town  or  on  the  garrison  staff. 
The  entire  freedom  of  discussion  enjoyed  by  her  visitors,  the 
absolute  discretion  required  of  them,  tacitly  and  by  the  adop- 
tion of  the  manners  of  the  best  society,  combined  to  make 
Veronique  exclusive  and  very  slow  to  admit  those  who 
courted  the  honor  of  her  society  to  her  circle.  Other  women 
saw  not  without  jealousy  that  the  cleverest  and  pleasantest 
men  gathered  round  Mme.  Graslin,  and  her  power  was  the 
more  widely  felt  in  Limoges  because  she  was  exclusive.  The 
four  or  five  women  whom  she  accepted  were  strangers  to  the 
district,  who  had  accompanied  their  husbands  from  Paris, 
and  looked  on  provincial  tittle-tattle  with  disgust.  If  some 
one  chanced  to  call  who  did  not  belong  to  the  inner  cenacle, 
the  conversation  underwent  an  immediate  change,  and  with 
one  accord  all  present  spoke  of  indifferent  things. 

So  the  Hotel  Graslin  became  a  sort  of  oasis  in  the  desert 
where  a  chosen  few  sought  relief  in  each  other's  society  from 
the  tedium  of  provincial  life,  a  house  where  officials  might 
discuss  politics  and  speak  their  minds  without  fear  of  their 
opinions  being  reported,  where  all  things  worthy  of  mockery 
were  fair  game  for  wit  and  laughter,  where  every  one  laid 
aside  his  professional  uniform  to  give  his  natural  character 
free  play. 

In  the  beginning  of  that  year  1828,  Mine.  Graslin,  whose 
girlhood  had  been  spent  in  the  most  complete  obscurity,  who 
had  been  pronounced  to  be  plain  and  stupid  and  a  complete 
nullity,  was  now  looked  upon  as  the  most  important  person 
in  the  town,  and  the  most  conspicuous  woman  in  society.  No 
one  called  upon  her  in  the  morning,  for  her  benevolence  and 
her  punctuality  in  the  performance  of  her  duties  of  religion 
were  well  known.  She  almost  invariably  went  to  the  first 
mass,  returning  in  time  for  her  husband's  early  breakfast. 
He  was  the  most  unpunctual  of  men,  but  she  always  sat  with 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  47 

him,  for  Graslin  had  learned  to  expect  this  little  attention 
from  his  wife.  As  for  Graslin,  he  never  let  slip  an  oppor- 
tunity for  praising  her ;  he  thought  her  perfection.  She  never 
asked  him  for  money;  he  was  free  to  pile  up  silver  crown  on 
silver  crown,  and  to  expand  his  field  of  operations.  He  had 
opened  an  account  with  the  firm  of  Brezac;  he  had  set  sail 
upon  a  commercial  sea,  and  the  horizon  was  gradually 
widening  out  before  him;  his  over-stimulated  interest,  in- 
tent upon  the  great  events  of  the  green  table  called  Specula- 
tion, kept  him  perpetually  in  the  cold  frenzied  intoxication 
of  the  gambler. 

During  this  happy  year,  and  indeed  until  the  beginning 
of  the  year  1829,  Mme.  Graslin's  friends  watched  a  strange 
change  passing  in  her,  under  their  eyes;  her  beauty  became 
really  extraordinary,  but  the  reasons  of  the  change  were  never 
discovered.  Her  eyes  seemed  to  be  bathed  in  a  soft  liquid 
light,  full  of  tenderness,  the  blue  iris  widened  like  an  expand- 
ing flower  as  the  dark  pupils  contracted.  Memories  and 
happy  thoughts  seemed  to  light  up  her  brow,  which  grew 
whiter,  like  some  ridge  of  snow  in  the  dawn,  her  features 
seemed  to  regain  their  purity  of  outline  in  some  refining 
fire  within.  Her  face  lost  the  feverish  brown  color  which 
threatens  inflammation  of  the  liver,  the  malady  of  vigorous 
temperaments  of  troubled  minds  and  thwarted  affections. 
Her  temples  grew  adorably  fresh  and  youthful.  Frequently 
her  friends  saw  glimpses  of  the  divinely  fair  face  which  a 
Eaphael  might  have  painted,  the  face  which  disease  had  cov- 
ered with  an  ugly  film,  such  as  time  spreads  over  the  canvas  of 
the  great  master.  Her  hands  looked  whiter,  there  was  a  deli- 
cate fulness  in  the  rounded  curves  of  her  shoulders,  her  quick 
dainty  movements  displayed  to  the  full  the  lissome  grace  of 
her  form. 

The  women  said  that  she  was  in  love  with  M.  de  Gran- 
ville,  who,  for  that  matter,  paid  assiduous  court  to  her, 
though  Veronique  raised  between  them  the  barriers  of  a 
pious  resistance.  The  deputy  public  prosecutor  professed  a 
respectful  admiration  for  her  which  did  nol  impose  upon  fre- 


48  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

quenters  of  her  house.  Clear-sighted  observers  attributed  to 
a  different  cause  this  change,  which  made  Veronique  still 
more  charming  to  her  friends.  Any  woman,  however  devout, 
could  not  but  feel  in  her  inmost  soul  that  it  was  sweet  to  be 
so  courted,  to  know  the  satisfaction  of  living  in  a  congenial 
atmosphere,  the  delight  of  exchanging  ideas  (so  great  a  re- 
lief in  a  tedious  life),  the  pleasure  of  the  society  of  well-read 
and  agreeable  men,  and  of  sincere  friendships,  which  grew 
day  by  day.  It  needed,  perhaps,  an  observer  still  more  pro- 
found, more  acute,  or  more  suspicious  than  any  of  those  who 
came  to  the  Hotel  Graslin  to  divine  the  untamed  greatness, 
the  strength  of  the  woman  of  the  people  pent  up  in  the  depths 
of  Veronique's  nature.  Now  and  again  they  might  surprise 
her  in  a  torpid  mood,  overcast  by  gloomy  or  merely  pensive 
musings,  but  all  her  friends  knew  that  she  carried  many 
troubles  in  her  heart;  that,  doubtless,  in  the  morning  she 
had  been  initiated  into  many  sorrows,  that  she  penetrated 
into  dark  places  where  vice  is  appalling  by  reason  of  its  un- 
blushing front.  Not  seldom,  indeed,  the  Vicomte,  soon  pro- 
moted to  be  an  avocat  general,  scolded  her  for  some  piece  of 
blind  benevolence  discovered  by  him  in  the  course  of  his  in- 
vestigations. Justice  complained  that  Charity  had  paved  the 
way  to  the  police  court. 

"Do  you  want  money  for  some  of  your  poor  people?"  old 
Grossetete  had  asked  on  this,  as  he  took  her  hand  in  his.  "I 
will  share  the  guilt  of  your  benefactions." 

"It  is  impossible  to  make  everybody  rich,"  she  answered, 
heaving  a  sigh. 

An  event  occurred  at  the  beginning  of  this  year  which  was 
to  change  the  whole  current  of  Veronique's  inner  life,  as  well 
as  the  wonderful  expression  of  her  face,  which  henceforward 
became  a  portrait  infinitely  more  interesting  to  a  painter's 
eyes. 

Graslin  grew  rather  fidgety  about  his  health,  and  to  his 
wife's  great  despair  left  his  ground-floor  quarters  and  re- 
turned to  her  apartment  to  be  tended.  Soon  afterwards  Mme. 
Graslin's  condition  became  a  matter  of  town  gossip;  she  was 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  49 

about  to  become  a  mother.  Her  evident  sadness,  mingled 
with  joy,  filled  her  friends'  thoughts ;  they  then  divined  that, 
in  spite  of  her  virtues,  she  was  happiest  when  she  lived  apart 
from  her  husband.  Perhaps  she  had  had  hopes  for  better  things 
since  the  day  when  the  Vicomte  de  Granville  had  declined  to 
marry  the  richest  heiress  in  Limousin,  and  still  continued  to 
pay  court  to  her.  Ever  since  that  event  the  profound  poli- 
ticians who  exercise  the  censorship  of  sentiments,  and  settle 
other  people's  business  in  the  intervals  of  whist,  had  sus- 
pected the  lawyer  and  young  Mme.  Graslin  of  basing  hopes 
of  their  own  on  the  banker's  failing  health — hopes  which  were 
brought  to  nothing  by  this  unexpected  development.  It  was 
a  time  in  Veronique's  life  when  deep  distress  of  mind  was 
added  to  the  apprehensions  of  a  first  confinement,  always 
more  perilous,  it  is  said,  when  a  woman  is  past  her  first  youth, 
but  all  through  those  days  her  friends  showed  themselves 
more  thoughtful  for  her ;  there  was  not  one  of  them  but  made 
her  feel  in  innumerable  small  ways  what  warmth  there  was 
in  these  friendships  of  hers,  and  how  solid  they  had  be- 
come. 


II 

TASCHERON 

IT  was  in  the  same  year  that  Limoges  witnessed  the  terrible 
spectacle  and  strange  tragedy  of  the  Tascheron  case,  in  which 
the  young  Vicomte  de  Granville  displayed  the  talents  which 
procured  him  the  appointment  of  public  prosecutor  at  a  later 
day. 

An  old  man  living  in  a  lonely  house  on  the  outskirts  of 
the  Faubourg  Saint-Etienne  was  murdered.  A  large  orchard 
isolates  the  dwelling  on  the  side  of  the  town,  on  the  other 
there  is  a  pleasure  garden,  with  a  row  of  unused  hothouses 
at  the  bottom  of  it ;  then  follow  the  open  fields.  The  bank 
of  the  Vienne  in  this  place  rises  up  very  steeply  from  the 


50  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

river,  the  little  front  garden  slopes  down  to  this  embankment, 
and  is  bounded  by  a  low  wall  surmounted  by  an  open  fence. 
Square  stone  posts  are  set  along  it  at  even  distances,  but  the 
painted  wooden  railings  are  there  more  by  way  of  ornament 
than  as  a  protection  to  the  property. 

The  old  man,  Pingret  by  name,  a  notorious  miser,  lived 
quite  alone  save  for  a  servant,  a  country  woman  whom  he 
employed  in  the  garden.  He  trained  his  espaliers  and  pruned 
his  fruit-trees  himself,  gathering  his  crops  and  selling  them 
in  the  town,  and  excelled  in  growing  early  vegetables  for  the 
market.  The  old  man's  niece  and  sole  heiress,  who  had  mar- 
ried a  M.  des  Vanneaulx,  a  man  of  small  independent  means, 
and  lived  in  Limoges,  had  many  a  time  implored  her  uncle 
to  keep  a  man  as  a  protection  to  the  place,  pointing  out  to 
him  that  he  would  be  able  to  grow  more  garden  produce  in 
several  borders  planted  with  standard  fruit-trees  beneath 
which  he  now  sowed  millet  and  the  like ;  but  it  was  of  no  use, 
the  old  man  would  not  hear  of  it.  This  contradiction  in  a 
miser  gave  rise  to  all  sorts  of  conjectures  in  the  houses  where 
the  Vanneaulx  spent  their  evenings.  The  most  diver  gent 
opinions  had  more  than  once  divided  parties  at  boston.  Some 
knowing  folk  came  to  the  conclusion  that  there  was  a  treasure 
hidden  under  the  growing  luzern. 

"If  I  were  in  Mme.  des  Vanneaulx's  place,"  remarked  one 
pleasant  gentleman,  "I  would  not  worry  my  uncle,  I  know. 
If  somebody  murders  him,  well  and  good;  somebody  will  mur- 
der him.  I  should  come  in  for  the  property." 

Mme.  des  Vanneaulx,  however,  thought  differently.  As  a 
manager  at  the  Theatre-Italien  implores  the  tenor  who 
"draws"  a  full  house  to  be  very  careful  to  wrap  up  his  throat, 
and  gives  him  his  cloak  when  the  singer  has  forgotten  his 
overcoat,  so  did  Mme.  des  Vanneaulx  try  to  watch  over  her 
relative.  She  had  offered  little  Pingret  a  magnificent  yard- 
dog,  but  the  old  man  sent  the  animal  back  again  by  Jeanne 
Malassis,  his  servant. 

"Your  uncle  has  no  mind  to  have  one  more  mouth  to  feed 
up  at  our  place,"  said  the  handmaid  to  Mme.  des  Vanneaulx. 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  '51 

The  event  proved  that  his  niece's  fears  had  been  but  too 
well  founded.  Pingret  was  murdered  one  dark  night  in  the 
patch  of  luzern,  whither  he  had  gone,  no  doubt,  to  add  a  few 
louis  to  a  pot  full  of  gold.  The  servant,  awakened  by  the 
sounds  of  the  struggle,  had  the  courage  to  go  to  the  old  man's 
assistance,  and  the  murderer  found  himself  compelled  to  kill 
her  also,  lest  she  should  bear  witness  against  him.  This  cal- 
culation of  probable  risks,  which  nearly  always  prompts  a  man 
guilty  of  one  murder  to  add  another  to  his  account,  is  one  un- 
fortunate result  of  the  capital  sentence  which  he  beholds 
looming  in  the  distance. 

The  double  crime  was  accompanied  by  strange  circum- 
stances, which  told  as  strongly  for  the  defence  as  for  the 
prosecution.  When  the  neighbors  had  seen  nothing  of  Pin- 
gret nor  of  the  servant  the  whole  morning;  when,  as  they 
came  and  went,  they  looked  through  the  wooden  railings  and 
saw  that  the  doors  and  windows  (contrary  to  wont)  were  still 
barred  and  fastened,  the  thing  began  to  be  bruited  abroad 
through  the  Faubourg  Saint-Etienne,  till  it  reached  Mme. 
des  Vanneaulx  in  the  Eue  des  Cloches.  Mme.  des  Van- 
neaulx,  whose  mind  always  ran  on  horrors,  sent  for  the 
police,  and  the  doors  were  broken  open.  In  the  four  patches 
of  luzern  there  were  four  gaping  holes  in  the  earth,  sur- 
rounded by  rubbish,  and  strewn  with  broken  shards  of  the 
pots  which  had  been  full  of  gold  the  night  before.  In  two  of 
the  holes,  which  had  been  partly  filled  up,  they  found  the 
bodies  of  old  Pingret  and  Jeanne  Malassis,  buried  in  their 
clothes ;  she,  poor  thing,  had  run  out  barefooted  in  her  night- 
dress. 

While  the  public  prosecutor,  the  commissary,  and  the  ex- 
amining magistrate  took  down  all  these  particulars,  the  un- 
lucky des  Vanneaulx  collected  the  scraps  of  broken  pottery, 
put  them  together,  and  calculated  the  amount  the  jars  should 
have  held.  The  authorities,  perceiving  the  common-sense  of 
this  proceeding,  estimated  the  stolen  treasure  at  a  thousand 
pieces  per  pot;  but  -vrhat  was  the  value  of  those  coins?  Had 
they  been  forty  or  forty-cight-franc  pieces,  twenty-four  or 


52'  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

twenty  francs  ?  Every  creature  in  Limoges  who  had  expecta- 
tions felt  for  the  des  Vanneaulx  in  this  trying  situation.  The 
sight  of  those  fragments  of  crockery  ware  which  once  held 
gold  gave  a  lively  stimulus  to  Limousin  imaginations.  As 
for  little  Pingret,  who  often  came  to  sell  his  vegetables  in  the 
market  himself,  who  lived  on  bread  and  onions,  and  did  not 
spend  three  hundred  francs  in  a  year,  who  never  did  any- 
body a  good  turn,  nor  any  harm  either,  no  one  regretted  him 
in  the  least — he  had  never  done  a  pennyworth  of  good  to  the 
Faubourg  Saint-Etienne.  As  for  Jeanne  Malassis,  her  heroism 
was  considered  to  be  ill-timed;  the  old  man  if  he  had  lived 
would  have  grudged  her  reward;  altogether,  her  admirers 
were  few  compared  with  the  number  of  those  who  remarked, 
"I  should  have  slept  soundly  in  her  place,  I  know !" 

Then  the  curious  and  the  next-of-kin  were  made  aware  of 
the  inconsistencies  of  certain  misers.  The  police,  when  they 
came  to  draw  up  the  report,  could  find  neither  pen  nor  ink 
in  the  bare,  cold,  dismal,  tumbledown  house.  The  little  old 
man's  horror  of  expense  was  glaringly  evident,  in  the  great 
holes  in  the  roof,  which  let  in  rain  and  snow  as  well  as  light ; 
in  the  moss-covered  cracks  which  rent  the  walls;  in  the  rot- 
ting doors  ready  to  drop  from  their  hinges  at  the  least  shock, 
the  unoiled  paper  which  did  duty  as  glass  in  the  windows. 
There  was  not  a  window  curtain  in  the  house,  not  a  looking- 
glass  over  the  mantel-shelves ;  the  grates  were  chiefly  remark- 
able for  the  absence  of  fire-irons  and  the  accumulation  of 
damp  soot,  a  sort  of  varnish  over  the  handful  of  sticks  or  the 
log  of  wood  which  lay  on  the  hearth.  And  as  to  the  furniture 
— a  few  crippled  chairs  and  maimed  armchairs,  two  beds, 
hard  and  attenuated  (Time  had  adorned  old  Pingret's  bed- 
curtains  with  open-work  embroidery  of  a  bold  design),  one 
or  two  cracked  pots  and  riveted  plates,  a  worm-eaten  bureau, 
where  the  old  man  used  to  keep  his  garden-seeds,  household 
linen  thick  with  darns  and  patches, — the  furniture,  in  short, 
co/isisted  of  a  mass  of  rags,  which  had  only  a  sort  of  life  kept 
in  them  by  the  spirit  of  their  owner,  and  now  that  he  was 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  53 

gone,  they  dropped  to  pieces  and  crumbled  to  powder.  At  the 
first  touch  of  the  brutal  hands  of  the  police  officers  and  in- 
furiated next-of-kin  they  evaporated,  heaven  knows  how,  and 
came  to  nameless  ruin  and  an  indefinable  end.  They  were  not. 
Before  the  terrors  of  a  public  auction  they  vanished  away. 

For  a  long  time  the  greater  part  of  the  inhabitants  of  the 
capital  of  Limousin  continued  to  take  an  interest  in  the  hard 
case  of  the  worthy  des  Vanneaulx,  who  had  two  children; 
but  as  soon  as  justice  appeared  to  have  discovered  the  per- 
petrator of  the  crime,  this  person  absorbed  all  their  atten- 
tion, he  became  the  hero  of  the  day,  and  the  des  Vanneaulx 
were  relegated  to  the  obscurity  of  the  background. 

Towards  the  end  of  the  month  of  March,  Mme.  Graslin 
had  already  felt  the  discomforts  incidental  to  her  condition, 
which  could  no  longer  be  concealed.  By  that  time  inquiries 
were  being  made  into  the  crime  committed  in  the  Faubourg 
Saint-Etienne,  but  the  murderer  was  still  at  large. 
Veronique  received  visitors  in  her  bedroom,  whither  her 
friends  came  for  their  game  of  whist.  A  few  days  later 
Mme.  Graslin  kept  her  room  altogether.  More  than  once 
already  she  had  been  seized  with  the  unaccountable  fancies 
commonly  attributed  to  women  with  child.  Her  mother  came 
almost  every  day  to  see  her;  the  two  spent  whole  hours  in  each 
other's  society. 

It  was  nine  o'clock.  The  card-tables  were  neglected,  every 
one  was  talking  about  the  murder  and  the  des  Vanneaulx, 
when  the  Vicomte  de  Granville  came  in. 

"We  have  caught  the  man  who  murdered  old  Pingret !"  he 
cried  in  high  glee. 

"And  who  is  it  ?"    The  question  came  from  all  sides. 

"One  of  the  workmen  in  a  porcelain  factory,  a  man  of  ex- 
emplary conduct,  and  in  a  fair  way  to  make  his  fortune. — 
He  is  one  of  your  husband's  old  workmen,"  he  added,  turn- 
ing to  Mme.  Graslin. 

"Who  is  it?"  Veronique  asked  faintly. 

"Jean-Frangois  Tascheron." 

"The  unfortunate  man !"  she  exclaimed.  "Yes.  I  remem- 
-5 


54  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

ber  seeing  him  several  times.    My  poor  father  recommended 

him  to  me  as  a  valuable  hand " 

"He  left  the  place  before  Sauviat  died,"  remarked  old  Mme. 
Sauviat ;  'Tie  went  over  to  the  MM.  Philippart  to  better  'him- 
self.— But  is  my  daughter  well  enough  to  hear  about  this?" 
she  added,  looking  at  Mme.  Graslin,  who  was  as  white  as  the 
sheets. 

After  that  evening  old  Mother  Sauviat  left  her  house,  and 
in  spite  of  her  seventy  years,  installed  herself  as  her  daughter's 
nurse.  She  did  not  leave  Veronique's  room.  No  matter  at 
what  hour  Mme.  Graslin's  friends  called  to  see  her,  they  found 
the  old  mother  sitting  heroically  at  her  post  by  the  bedside, 
busied  with  her  eternal  knitting,  brooding  over  her  Veronique 
as  in  the  days  of  the  smallpox,  answering  for  her  child,  and 
sometimes  denying  her  to  visitors.  The  love  between  the 
mother  and  daughter  was  so  well  known  in  Limoges  that  peo- 
ple took  the  old  woman's  ways  as  a  matter  of  course. 

A  few  days  later,  when  the  Vicomte  de  Granville  began  to 
give  some  of  the  details  of  the  Tascheron  case,  in  which  the 
whole  town  took  an  eager  interest,  thinking  to  interest  the 
invalid,  La  Sauviat  cut  him  short  by  asking  if  he  meant  to 
give  Mme.  Graslin  bad  dreams  again,  but  Veronique  begged 
M.  de  Granville  to  go  on,  fixing  her  eyes  on  his  face.  So  it 
fell  out  that  Mme.  Graslin's  friends  heard  in  her  house  the 
result  of  the  preliminary  examination,  soon  afterwards  made 
public,  at  first-hand  from  the  avocat  general.  Here,  in  a  con- 
densed form,  is  the  substance  of  the  indictment  which  wag 
being  drawn  up  by  the  prosecution: — 

Jean-Francois  Tascheron  was  the  son  of  a  small  farmer 
burdened  with  a  large  family,  who  lived  in  the  township  of 
Montegnac.  Twenty  years  before  the  perpetration  of  this 
crime,  whose  memory  still  lingers  in  Limousin,  Canton 
Montegnac  bore  a  notoriously  bad  character.  It  was  a  proverb 
in  the  Criminal  Court  of  Limoges  that  fifty  out  of  every  hun- 
dred convictions  came  from  the  Montegnac  district.  Since 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  55 

1816,  two  years  after  the  arrival  of  the  new  cure,  M.  Bonnet, 
Montegnac  lost  its  old  reputation,  and  no  longer  sent  up  its 
contingent  to  the  assizes.  The  change  was  generally  set  down 
to  M.  Bonnet's  influence  in  the  commune,  which  had  once 
been  a  perfect  hotbed  of  bad  characters  who  gave  trouble  in 
all  the  country  round  about.  Jean-Frangois  Tascheron's 
crime  suddenly  restored  Montegnac  to  its  former  unenviable 
pre-eminence.  It  happened,  singularly  enough,  that  the 
Tascherons  had  been  almost  the  only  family  in  the  country- 
side which  had  not  departed  from  the  old  exemplary  tradi- 
tions and  religious  habits  now  fast  dying  out  in  country 
places.  In  them  the  cure  had  found  a  moral  support  and 
basis  of  operations,  and  naturally  he  thought  a  great  deal  of 
them.  The  whole  family  were  hard  workers,  remarkable  for 
their  honesty  and  the  strong  affection  that  bound  them  to 
each  other;  Jean-Frangois  Tascheron  had  had  none  but  good 
examples  set  before  him  at  home.  A  praiseworthy  ambition 
had  brought  him  to  Limoges.  He  meant  to  make  a  little  for- 
tune honestly  by  a  handicraft,  and  left  the  township,  to  the 
regret  of  his  relations  and  friends,  who  were  much  attached 
to  him. 

His  conduct  during  his  two  years  of  apprenticeship  was 
admirable;  apparently  no  irregularity  in  his  life  had  fore- 
shadowed the  hideous  crime  for  which  he  forfeited  his  life. 
The  leisure  which  other  workmen  wasted  in  the  wineshop  and 
debauches,  Tascheron  spent  in  study. 

Justice  in  the  provinces  has  plenty  of  time  on  her  hands, 
but  the  most  minute  investigation  threw  no  light  whatever 
on  the  secrets  of  this  existence.  The  landlady  of  Jean- 
Frangois'  humble  lodging,  skilfully  questioned,  said  that  she 
had  never  had  such  a  steady  young  man  as  a  lodger.  He  was 
pleasant-spoken  and  good-tempered,  almost  gay,  as  you  might 
say.  About  a  year  ago  a  change  seemed  to  come  over  him. 
He  would  stop  out  all  night  several  times  a  month,  and  often 
for  several  nights  at  a  time.  She  did  not  know  whereabouts 
in  the  town  he  spent  those  nights.  Still,  she  had  sometimes 
thought,  judging  by  the  mud  on  his  boots,  that  her  lodger  had 


56  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

been  somewhere  out  in  the  country.  He  used  to  wear  pumps, 
too,  instead  of  hobnailed  boots,  although  he  was  going  out 
of  the  town,  and  before  he  went  he  used  to  shave  and  scent 
himself,  and  put  on  clean  clothes. 

The  examining  magistrate  carried  his  investigations  to 
such  a  length  that  inquiries  were  made  in  houses  of  ill  fame 
and  among  licensed  prostitutes,  but  no  one  knew  anything  of 
Jean-Frangois  Tascheron;  other  inquiries  made  among  the 
class  of  factory  operatives  and  shop-girls  met  with  no  better 
success ;  none  of  those  whose  conduct  was  light  had  any  rela- 
tions with  the  accused. 

A  crime  without  any  motive  whatever  is  inconceivable, 
especially  when  the  criminal's  bent  was  apparently  towards 
self-improvement,  while  his  ambitions  argued  higher  ideals 
and  sense  superior  to  that  of  other  workmen.  The  whole 
criminal  department,  like  the  examining  magistrate,  were 
fain  to  find  a  motive  for  the  murder  in  a  passion  for  play 
on  Tascheron's  part;  but  after  minute  investigation,  it  was 
proved  that  the  accused  had  never  gambled  in  his  life. 

From  the  very  first  Jean-Franc,ois  took  refuge  in  a  system 
of  denial  which  could  not  but  break  down  in  the  face  of  cir- 
cumstantial evidence  when  his  case  should  come  before  a 
jury;  but  his  manner  of  defending  himself  suggested  the  in- 
tervention of  some  person  well  acquainted  with  the  law,  or 
gifted  with  no  ordinary  intelligence.  The  evidence  of  his 
guilt,  as  in  most  similar  cases,  was  at  once  unconvincing  and 
yet  too  strong  to  be  set  aside.  The  principal  points  which 
told  against  Tascheron  were  four — his  absence  from  home 
on  the  night  of  the  murder  (he  would  not  say  where  he  spent 
the  night,  and  scorned  to  invent  an  alibi)  ;  a  shred  of  his 
blouse,  torn  without  his  knowledge  during  the  struggle  with 
the  poor  servant-girl,  and  blown  by  the  wind  into  the  tree 
where  it  was  found ;  the  fact  that  he  had  been  seen  hanging 
about  the  house  that  evening  by  people  in  the  suburb,  who 
would  not  have  remembered  this  but  for  the  crime  which  fol- 
lowed; and  lastly,  a  false  key  which  he  had  made  to  fit  the 
lock  of  the  garden-gate,  which  was  entered  from  the  fields. 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  57 

It  had  been  hidden  rather  ingeniously  in  one  of  the  holes, 
some  two  feet  below  the  surface.  M.  des  Vanneaulx  had  come 
upon  it  while  digging  to  see  whether  by  chance  there  might 
be  a  second  hoard  beneath  the  first.  The  police  succeeded  in 
finding  the  man  who  supplied  the  sceel,  the  vice,  and  the  key- 
file.  This  had  been  their  first  clue,  it  put  them  on  Tascheron's 
track,  and  finally  they  arrested  him  on  the  limits  of  the  de- 
partment in  a  wood  where  he  was  waiting  for  the  diligence. 
An  hour  later,  and  he  would  have  been  on  his  way  to  Amer- 
ica. Moreover,  in  spite  of  the  care  with  which  the  footprints 
had  been  erased  in  the  trampled  earth  and  on  the  muddy 
road,  the  rural  policeman  had  found  the  marks  of  thin  shoes, 
clear  and  unmistakable,  in  the  soil.  Tascheron's  lodgings 
were  searched,  and  a  pair  of  pumps  were  found  which  ex- 
actly corresponded  with  the  impress,  a  fatal  coincidence 
which  confirmed  the  curious  observations  of  his  landlady. 

Then  the  criminal  investigation  department  saw  another 
influence  at  work  in  the  crime,  and  a  second  and  perhaps  a 
prime  mover  in  the  case.  Tascheron  must  have  had  an  ac- 
complice, if  only  for  the  reason  that  it  was  impossible  for 
one  man  to  take  away  such  a /weight  of  coin.  No  man,  how- 
ever strong,  could  carry  twenty-five  thousand  francs  in  gold 
very  far.  If  each  of  the  pots  had  held  so  much,  he  must  have 
made  four  journeys.  Now,  a  singular  accident  determined 
the  very  hour  when  the  deed  was  done.  Jeanne  Malassis, 
springing  out  of  bed  in  terror  at  her  master's  shrieks,  had 
overturned  the  table  on  which  her  watch  lay  (the  one  pres- 
ent which  the  miser  had  made  her  in  five  years).  The  fall 
had  broken  the  mainspring,  and  stopped  the  hands  at  two 
o'clock. 

In  mid-March,  the  time  of  the  murder,  the  sun  rises  be- 
tween five  and  six  in  the  morning.  So  on  the  hypothesis 
traced  out  by  the  police  and  the  department,  it  was  clearly 
impossible  that  Tascheron  should  have  carried  off  the  money 
unaided  and  alone,  even  for  a  short  distance,  in  the  time. 
The  evident  pains  which  the  man  had  taken  to  erase  other 
footprints  to  the  neglect  of  his  own,  also  indicated  an  un- 
known assistant. 


£8  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

Justice,  driven  to  invent  some  reason  for  the  crime,  decided 
on  a  frantic  passion  for  some  woman,  and  as  she  was  not  to 
be  found  among  the  lower  classes,  forensic  sagacity  looked 
higher. 

Could  it  be  some  woman  of  the  bourgeoisie  who,  feeling 
sure  of  the  discretion  of  a  lover  of  so  puritanical  a  cut,  had 
read  with  him  the  opening  chapters  of  a  romance  which  had 
ended  in  this  ugly  tragedy?  There  were  circumstances  in 
the  case  which  almost  bore  out  this  theory.  The  old  man 
had  been  killed  by  blows  from  a  spade.  The  murder,  it 
seemed,  was  the  result  of  chance,  a  sudden  fortuitous  develop- 
ment, and  not  a  part  of  a  deliberate  plan.  The  two  lovers 
might  perhaps  have  concerted  the  theft,  but  not  the  second 
crime.  Then  Tascheron  the  lover  and  Pingret  the  miser  had 
crossed  each  other's  paths,  and  in  the  thick  darkness  of  night 
two  inexorable  passions  met  on  the  same  spot,  both  attracted 
thither  by  gold. 

Justice  devised  a  new  plan  for  obtaining  light  on  these 
dark  data.  Jean-Frangois  had  a.  favorite  sister;  her  they  ar- 
rested and  examined  privatety,  hoping  in  this  way  to  come  by 
a  knowledge  of  the  mysteries  t  of  her  brother's  private  life. 
Denise  Tascheron  denied  all  knowledge  of  his  affairs;  pru- 
dence dictating  a  system  of  negative  answers  which  led  her 
questioners  to  suspect  that  she  really  knew  the  reasons  of  the 
crime.  Denise  Tascheron,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  knew  nothing 
whatever  about  it,  but  for  the  rest  of  her  days  she  was  to  be 
under  a  cloud  in  consequence  of  her  detention. 

The  accused  showed  a  spirit  very  unusual  in  a  working- 
man.  He  was  too  clever  for  the  cleverest  "sheep  of  the 
prisons"  with  whom  he  came  in  contact — though  he  did  not 
discover  that  he  had  to  do  with  a  spy.  The  keener  intelli- 
gences among  the  magistracy  saw  in  him  a  murderer  through 
passion,  not  through  necessity,  like  the  common  herd  of  crim- 
inals who  pass  by  way  of  the  petty  sessions  and  the  hulks  to 
a  capital  charge.  He  was  shrewdly  plied  with  questions  put 
with  this  idea;  but  the  man's  wonderful  discretion  left  the 
magistrates  much  where  they  were  before.  The  romantic  but 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  59 

plausible  theory  of  a  passion  for  a  woman  of  higher  rank 
once  admitted,  insidious  questions  were  suddenly  asked  more 
than  once;  but  Jean-Frangois'  discretion  issued  victorious 
from  all  the  mental  tortures  which  the  ingenuity  of  an  ex- 
amining magistrate  could  inflict. 

As  a  final  expedient,  Tascheron  was  told  that  the  person 
for  whom  he  had  committed  the  crime  had  been  discovered 
and  arrested ;  but  his  face  underwent  no  change,  he  contented 
himself  with  the  ironical  retort,  "I  should  be  very  glad  to  see 
that  person!" 

When  these  details  became  known,  there  were  plenty  of 
people  who  shared  the  magistrate's  suspicions,  confirmed  to 
all  appearance  by  the  behavior  of  the  accused,  who  main- 
tained the  silence  of  a  savage.  An  all-absorbing  interest  at- 
tached to  a  young  man  who  had  come  to  be  a  problem. 
Every  one  will  understand  how  the  public  curiosity  was  stimu- 
lated by  the  facts  of  the  case,  and  how  eagerly  reports  of  the 
examination  were  followed;  for  in  spite  of  all  the  probings 
of  the  police,  the  case  for  the  prosecution  remained  on  the 
brink  of  a  mystery,  which  the  authorities  did  not  dare  to 
penetrate,  beset  with  dangers  as  it  was.  In  some  cases  a  half- 
certainty  is  not  enough  for  the  magistracy.  So  it  was  hoped 
that  the  buried  truth  would  arise  and  come  to  light  at  the 
great  day  of  the  Assizes,  an  occasion  when  criminals  fre- 
quently lose  their  heads. 

It  happened  that  M.  Graslin  was  on  the  jury  empaneled 
for  the  occasion,  and  Veronique  could  not  but  hear  through 
him  or  through  M.  de  Granville  the  whole  story  of  a  trial 
which  kept  Limousin,  and  indeed  all  France,  in  excitement 
for  a  fortnight.  The  behavior  of  the  prisoner  at  the  bar 
justified  the  romances  founded  on  the  conjectures  of  justice 
which  were  current  in  the  town ;  more  than  once  his  eyes  were 
turned  searchingly  on  the  bevy  of  women  privileged  to  enjoy 
the  spectacle  of  a  sensational  drama  in  real  life.  Every  time 
that  the  clear  impenetrable  gaze  was  turned  on  the  fashion- 
able audience,  it  produced  a  flutter  of  consternation,  so 
greatly  did  every  woman  fear  lest  she  might  seem  to  inquisi- 


00  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

tive  eyes  in  the  Court  to  be  the  prisoner's  partner  in  guilt. 

The  useless  efforts  of  the  criminal  investigation  department 
were  then  made  public,  and  Limoges  was  informed  of  the  pre- 
cautions taken  by  the  accused  to  ensure  the  complete  success 
of  his  crime. 

Some  months  before  that  fatal  night,  Jean-Frangois  had 
procured  a  passport  for  North  America.  Clearly  he  had 
meant  to  leave  France.  Clearly,  therefore,  the  woman  in  the 
case  must  be  married;  for  there  was,  of  course,  no  object  to 
be  gained  by  eloping  with  a  young  girl.  Perhaps  it  was  a 
desire  to  maintain  the  fair  unknown  in  luxury  which  had 
prompted  the  crime ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  a  search  through 
the  registers  of  the  administration  had  discovered  that  no 
passport  for  that  country  had  been  made  out  in  a  woman's 
name.  The  police  had  even. investigated  the  registers  in  Paris 
as  well  as  those  of  the  neighboring  prefectures,  but  fruit- 
lessly. 

As  the  case  proceeded,  every  least  detail  brought  to  light 
revealed  profound  forethought  on  the  part  of  a  man  of  no 
ordinary  intelligence.  While  the  most  virtuous  ladies  of 
Limousin  explained  the  sufficiently  inexplicable  use  of  even- 
ing shoes  for  a  country  excursion  on  muddy  roads  and  heavy 
soil,  by  the  plea  that  it  was  necessary  to  spy  upon  old  Pingret ; 
the  least  coxcombically  given  of  men  were  delighted  to  point 
out  how  eminently  a  pair  of  thin  pumps  favored  noiseless 
movements  about  a  house,  scaling  windows,  and  stealing  along 
corridors. 

Evidently  Jean-Frangois  Tascheron  and  his  mistress,  a 
young,  romantic,  and  beautiful  woman  (for  every  one  drew 
a  superb  portrait  of  the  lady) ,  had  contemplated  forgery,  and 
the  words  "and  wife"  were  to  be  filled  in  after  his  name  on 
the  passport. 

Card  parties  were  broken  up  during  these  evenings  by 
malicious  conjectures  and  comments.  People  began  to  cast 
about  for  the  names  of  women  who  went  to  Paris  during 
March  1829;  or  of  others  who  might  be  supposed  to  have 
made  preparations  openly  or  secretly  for  fligM.  The  trial 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  61 

supplied  Limoges  with  a  second  Fualdes  case,  with  an  un- 
known Mme.  Manson  by  way  of  improvement  on  the  first. 
Never,  indeed,  was  any  country  town  so  puzzled  as  Limoges 
after  the  Court  rose  each  day.  People's  very  dreams  turned 
on  the  trial.  Everything  that  transpired  raised  the  accused 
in  their  eyes ;  his  answers,  skilfully  turned  over  and  over,  ex- 
panded and  edited,  supplied  a  theme  for  endless  argument. 
One  of  the  jury  asked,  for  instance,  why  Tascheron  had 
taken  a  passport  to  America,  to  which  the  prisoner  replied 
that  he  meant  to  open  a  porcelain  factory  there.  In  this  way 
he  screened  his  accomplice  without  quitting  his  line  of  de- 
fence, and  supplied  conjecture  with  a  plausible  and  sufficient 
motive  for  the  crime  in  this  ambition  of  his. 

In  the  thick  of  these  disputes,  it  was  impossible  that 
Veronique's  friends  should  not  also  try  to  account  for 
Tascheron's  close  reserve.  One  evening  she  seemed  better 
than  usual.  The  doctor  had  prescribed  exercise;  and  that 
very  morning  Veronique,  leaning  on  her  mother's  arm,  had 
walked  out  as  far  as  Mme.  Sauviat's  cottage,  and  rested  there 
a  while.  When  she  came  home  again,  she  tried  to  sit  up  until 
her  husband  returned,  but  Graslin  was  late,  and  did  not  come 
back  from  the  Court  till  eight  o'clock;  his  wife  waited  on 
him  at  dinner  after  her  custom,  and  in  this  way  could  not  but 
hear  the  discussion  between  himself  and  his  friends. 

"We  should  have  known  more  about  this  if  my  poor  father 
w-ere  still  alive,"  said  Veronique,  "or  perhaps  the  man  would 

not  have  committed  the  crime But  I  notice  that  you 

have  all  of  you  taken  one  strange  notion  into  your  heads! 
You  will  have  it  that  there  is  a  woman  at  the  bottom  of  this 
business  (as  far  as  that  goes  I  myself  am  of  your  opinion), 
but  why  do  you  think  that  she  is  a  married  woman?  Why 
cannot  he  have  loved  some  girl  whose  father  and  mother  re- 
fused to  listen  to  him  ?" 

"Sooner  or  later  a  young  girl  might  have  been  legitimately 
his,"  returned  M.  de  Granville.  "Tascheron  is  not  wanting  in 
patience;  he  would  have  had  time  to  make  an  independence 
honestly;  he  could  have  waited  until  the  girl  was  old  enough 
to  marry  without  her  parents'  consent." 


62  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

"I  did  not  know  that  such  a  marriage  was  possible,"  said 
Mme.  Graslin.  "Then  how  is  it  that  no  one  had  the  least 
suspicion  of  it,  here  in  a  place  where  everybody  knows  the  af- 
fairs of  everybody  else,  and  sees  all  that  goes  on  in  his  neigh- 
bor's house?  Two  people  cannot  fall  in  love  without  at  any 
rate  seeing  each  other  or  being  seen  of  each  other!  What 
do  you  lawyers  think?"  she  continued,  looking  the  avocat 
general  full  in  the  eyes. 

"We  all  think  that  the  woman  must  be  the  wife  of  some 
tradesman,  a  man  in  business." 

"I  am  of  a  totally  opposite  opinion,"  said  Mme.  Graslin: 
"That  kind  of  woman  has  not  sentiments  sufficiently  lofty," 
a  retort  which  drew  all  eyes  upon  her.  Every  one  waited  for 
the  explanation  of  the  paradox. 

"At  night,"  she  said,  "when  I  do  not  sleep,  or  when  I  lie 
in  bed  in  the  daytime,  I  cannot  help  thinking  over  this  mys- 
terious business,  and  I  believe  I  can  guess  Tascheron's  mo- 
tives. These  are  my  reasons  for  thinking  that  it  is  a  girl,  and 
not  a  woman  in  the  case.  A  married  woman  has  other  inter- 
ests, if  not  other  feelings ;  she  has  a  divided  heart  in  her,  she 
cannot  rise  to  the  full  height  of  the  exaltation  inspired  by 
a  love  so  passionate  as  this.  She  must  never  have  borne  a 
child  if  she  is  to  conceive  a  love  in  which  maternal  instincts 
are  blended  with  those  which  spring  from  desire.  It  is  quite 
clear  that  some  woman  who  wished  to  be  a  sustaining  power 
to  him  has  loved  this  man.  That  unknown  woman  must  have 
brought  to  her  love  the  genius  which  inspires  artists  and  poets, 
ay,  and  women  also,  but  in  another  form,  for  it  is  a  woman's 
destiny  to  create,  not  things,  but  men.  Our  creations  are 
our  children,  our  children  are  our  pictures,  our  books  and 
statues.  Are  we  not  artists  when  we  shape  their  lives  from 
the  first?  So  I  am  sure  that  if  she  is  not  a  girl,  she  is  not 
a  mother;  I  would  stake  my  head  upon  it.  Lawyers  should 
have  a  woman's  instinct  to  apprehend  the  infinite  subtle 
touches  which  continually  escape  them  in  so  many  cases. 

"If  I  had  boon  your  substitute,''  she  continued,  turning 
to  M.  de  Granville,  "we  should  have  discovered  the  guilty 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  63 

woman,  always  supposing  that  she  is  guilty.  I  think,  with 
M.  1'Abbe  Dutheil,  that  the  two  lovers  had  planned  to  go  to 
America,  and  to  live  there  on  poor  Pingret's  money,  as  they 
had  none  of  their  own.  The  theft,  of  course,  led  to  the  mur- 
der, the  usual  fatal  consequence  of  the  fear  of  detection  and 
death.  And  it  would  be  worthy  of  you,"  she  added,  with  a 
suppliant  glance  at  the  young  lawyer,  "to  withdraw  the 
charge  of  malice  aforethought;  you  would  save  the  miserable 
man's  life.  He  is  so  great  in  spite  of  his  crime,  that  he  would 
perhaps  expiate  his  sins  by  some  magnificent  repentance.  The 
works  of  repentance  should  be  taken  into  account  in  the  de- 
liberations of  justice.  In  these  days  are  there  no  better  ways 
of  atoning  an  offence  than  by  the  loss  of  a  head,  or  by  found- 
ing, as  in  olden  times,  a  Milan  cathedral  ?" 

"Madame,  your  ideas  are  sublime,"  returned  the  lawyer; 
"but  if  the  averment  of  malice  aforethought  were  withdrawn, 
Tascheron  would  still  be  tried  for  his  life;  and  it  is  a  case 
of  aggravated  theft,  it  was  committed  at  night,  the  walls  were 
scaled,  the  premises  broken  into : 

"Then,  do  you  think  he  will  be  condemned?"  she  asked, 
lowering  her  eyelids. 

"I  do  not  doubt  it.    The  prosecution  has  the  best  of  it." 

A  light  shudder  ran  through  Mme.  Graslin.  Her  dress 
rustled.  "I  feel  cold,"  she  said. 

She  took  her  mother's  arm,  and  went  to  bed. 

"She  is  much  better  to-day,"  said  her  friends. 

The  next  morning  Yeronique  was  at  death's  door.  She 
smiled  at  her  doctor's  surprise  at  finding  her  in  an  almost 
dying  state. 

"Did  I  not  tell  you  that  the  walk  would  do  me  no  good?" 
she  asked. 

Ever  since  the  opening  of  the  trial  there  had  been  no  trace 
of  either  swagger  or  hypocrisy  in  Tascheron's  attitude.  The 
doctor,  always  with  a  view  of  diverting  his  patient's  mind, 
tried  to  explain  this  attitude  out  of  which  the  counsel  for 
the  defence  made  capital  for  his  client.  The  counsel's 


64  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

cleverness,  the  doctor  opined,  had  dazzled  the  accused,  who 
imagined  that  he  should  escape  the  capital  sentence.  Now 
and  then  an  expression  crossed  his  face  which  spoke  plainly 
of  hopes  of  some  coming  happiness  greater  than  mere 
acquittal  or  reprieve.  The  whole  previous  life  of  this  man 
of  twenty-three  was  such  a  flat  contradiction  to  the  deeds 
which  brought  it  to  a  close  that  his  champions  put  forward 
his  behavior  as  a  conclusive  argument.  In  fact,  the  clues 
spun  by  the  police  into  a  stout  hypothesis  fit  to  hang  a  man, 
dwindled  so  pitiably  when  woven  into  the  romance  of  the 
defence,  that  the  prisoner's  counsel  fought  for  his  client's  life 
with  some  prospect  of  success.  To  save  him  he  shifted  the 
ground  of  the  combat,  and  fought  the  battle  out  on  the  ques- 
tion of  malice  aforethought.  It  was  admitted,  without  preju- 
dice, that  the  robbery  had  been  planned  beforehand,  but 
contended  that  the  double  murder  had  been  the  result  of  an 
unexpected  resistance  in  both  cases.  The  issue  looked  doubt- 
ful; neither  side  had  made  good  its  case. 

When  the  doctor  went,  the  avocat  general  came  in  as  usual 
to  see  Veronique  before  he  went  to  the  Court. 

"I  have  read  the  counsel's  speeches  yesterday,"  she  told 
him.  "To-day  the  other  side  will  reply.  I  am  so  very  much 
interested  in  the  prisoner,  that  I  should  like  him  to  be  saved. 
Could  you  not  forego  a  triumph  for  once  in  your  life?  Let 
the  counsel  for  the  defence  gain  the  day.  Come,  make  me  a 
present  of  this  life,  and — perhaps — some  day  mine  shall  be 

yours There  is  a  doubt  after  that  fine  speech  of  Tas- 

cheron's  counsel ;  well,  then,  why  not " 

"Your  voice  is  quivering "  said  the  Vicomte,  almost 

taken  by  surprise. 

"Do  you  know  why?"  she  asked.  "My  husband  has  just 
pointed  out  a  coincidence — hideous  for  a  sensitive  nature  like 
mine — a  thing  that  is  like  to  cause  me  my  death.  You  will 
give  the  order  for  his  head  to  fall  just  about  the  time  when 
my  child  will  be  born." 

"Can  I  reform  the  Code?"  asked  the  public  prosecutor. 

"There,  go  !  You  do  not  know  how  to  love !"  she  answered, 
and  closed  her  eyes. 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  66 

She  lay  back  on  her  pillow,  and  dismissed  the  lawyer  with 
an  imperative  gesture. 

M.  Graslin  pleaded  hard,  but  in  vain,  for  an  acquittal,  ad- 
vancing an  argument,  first  suggested  to  him  by  his  wife,  and 
taken  up  by  two  of  his  friends  on  the  jury :  "If  we  spare  the 
man's  life,  the  des  Vanneaulx  will  recover  Pingret's  money." 
This  irresistible  argument  told  upon  the  jury,  and  divided 
them — seven  for  acquittal  as  against  five.  As  they  failed  to 
agree,  the  President  and  assessors  were  obliged  to  add  their 
suffrages,  and  they  were  on  the  side  of  the  minority.  Jean- 
Frangois  Tascheron  was  found  guilty  of  murder. 

When  sentence  was  passed,  Tascheron  burst  into  a  blind 
fury,  natural  enough  in  a  man  full  of  strength  and  life,  but 
seldom  seen  in  Court  when  it  is  an  innocent  man  who  is  con- 
demned. It  seemed  to  every  one  who  saw  it  that  the  drama 
was  not  brought  to  an  end  by  the  sentence.  So  obstinate  a 
struggle  (as  often  happens  in  such  cases)  gave  rise  to  two 
diametrically  opposite  opinions  as  to  the  guilt  of  the  central 
figure  in  it.  Some  saw  oppressed  innocence  in  him,  others  a 
criminal  justly  punished.  The  Liberal  party  felt  it  incum- 
bent upon  them  to  believe  in  Tascheron's  innocence;  it  was 
not  so  much  conviction  on  their  part  as  a  desire  to  annoy 
those  in  office. 

"What  ?"  cried  they.  "Is  a  man  to  be  condemned  because 
his  foot  happens  to  suit  the  size  of  a  footmark? — Because, 
forsooth,  he  was  not  at  his  lodgings  at  the  time?  (As  if  any 
young  fellow  would  not  die  sooner  than  compromise  a 
woman!) — Because  he  borrowed  tools  and  bought  steel? — 
(for  it  has  not  been  proved  that  he  made  the  key). — Because 
some  one  finds  a  blue  rag  in  a  tree,  where  old  Pingret  very 
likely  put  it  himself  to  scare  the  sparrows,  and  it  happens  to 
match  a  slit  made  in  the  blouse? — Take  a  man's  life  on  such 
grounds  as  these!  And,  after  all,  Jean-Frangois  has  denied 
every  charge,  and  the  prosecution  did  not  produce  any  wit- 
ness who  had  seen  him  commit  the  crime." 

Then  they  fell  to  corroborating,  amplifying,  and  para- 
phrasing  the  speeches  made  by  the  prisoner's  counsel  and  his 


66  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

line  of  defence.  As  for  Pingret;  what  was  Pingret?  A 
money-box  which  had  been  broken  open;  so  said  the  free- 
thinkers. 

A  few  so-called  Progressives,  who  did  not  recognize  the 
sacred  laws  of  property  (which  the  Saint-Simonians  had  al- 
ready attacked  in  the  abstract  region  of  Economical  Theory), 
went  further  still. 

"Old  Pingret/'  said  these,  "was  the  prime  author  of  the 
crime.  The  man  was  robbing  his  country  by  hoarding  the 
gold.  What  a  lot  of  businesses  that  idle  capital  might  have 
fertilized !  He  had  thwarted  industry ;  he  was  properly  pun- 
ished." 

As  for  the  servant-girl,  they  were  sorry  for  her ;  and  Denise, 
who  had  baffled  the  ingenuity  of  the  lawyers,  the  girl  who 
never  opened  her  mouth  at  the  trial  without  long  pondering 
over  what  she  meant  to  say,  excited  the  keenest  interest.  She 
became  a  figure  comparable,  in  another  sense,  with  Jeanie 
Deans,  whom  she  resembled  in  charm  of  character,  modesty, 
in  her  religious  nature  and  personal  comeliness.  So  Francois 
Tascheron  still  continued  to  excite  the  curiosity  not  merely 
of  Limoges,  but  of  the  whole  department.  Some  romantic 
women  openly  expressed  their  admiration  of  him. 

"If  there  is  a  love  for  some  woman  above  him  at  the  bot- 
tom of  all  this,"  said  these  ladies,  "the  man  is  certainly  no 
ordinary  man.  You  will  see  that  he  will  die  bravely !" 

Would  he  confess  ?  Would  he  keep  silence.  Bets  were  taken 
on  the  question.  Since  that  outburst  of  rage  with  which  he 
received  his  doom  (an  outburst  which  might  have  had  a  fatal 
ending  for  several  persons  in  court  but  for  the  intervention 
of  the  police),  the  criminal  threatened  violence  indiscrim- 
inately to  all  and  sundry  who  came  near  him,  and  with  the 
ferocity  of  a  wild  beast.  The  jailer  was  obliged  to  put  him 
in  a  strait-waistcoat;  for  if  he  was  dangerous  to  others,  he 
seemed  quite  as  likely  to  attempt  his  own  life.  Tascheron's 
despair,  thus  restrained  from  all  overt  acts  of  violence,  found 
a  vent  in  convulsive  struggles  which  frightened  the  warders, 
and  in  language  which,  in  the  Middle  Ages,  would  have  been 
set  down  to  demoniacal  possession. 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  61 

He  was  so  young  that  women  were  moved  to  pity  that  a 
life  so  filled  with  an  all-engrossing  love  should  be  cut  off. 
Quite  recently,  and  as  if  written  for  the  occasion,  Victor 
Hugo's  sombre  elegy  and  vain  plea  for  the  abolition  of  the 
death  penalty  (that  support  of  the  fabric  of  society)  had  ap- 
peared, and  Le  Dernier  jour  d'un  Condamne  was  the  order  of 
the  day  in  all  conversations.  Then  finally,  above  the  boards 
of  the  Assizes,  set,  as  it  were,  upon  a  pedestal,  rose  the  in- 
visible mysterious  figure  of  a  woman,  standing  there  with  her 
feet  dipped  in  blood;  condemned  to  suffer  heart-rending 
anguish,  yet  outwardly  to  live  in  unbroken  household  peace. 
At  her  every  one  pointed  the  finger — and  yet,  they  almost 
admired  that  Limousin  Medea  with  the  inscrutable  brow  and 
the  heart  of  steel  in  her  white  breast.  Perhaps  she  dwelt  in 
the  home  of  this  one  or  that,  and  was  the  sister,  cousin,  wife, 
or  daughter  of  such  an  one.  What  a  horror  in  their  midst ! 
It  is  in  the  domain  of  the  Imagination,  according  to  Na- 
poleon, that  the  power  of  the  Unknown  is  incalculably  great. 

As  for  the  des  Vanneaulx's  hundred  thousand  francs,  all 
the  efforts  of  the  police  had  not  succeeded  in  recovering  the 
money ;  and  the  criminal's  continued  silence  was  a  strange  de- 
feat for  the  prosecution.  M.  de  Granville  (in  the  place  of 
the  public  prosecutor  then  absent  at  the  Chamber  of  Depu- 
ties) tried  the  commonplace  stratagem  of  inducing  the  con- 
demned man  to  believe  that  the  penalty  might  be  commuted 
if  a  full  confession  were  made.  But  the  lawyer  had  scarcely 
showed  himself  before  the  prisoner  greeted  him  with  furious 
yells,  and  epileptic  contortions,  and  eyes  ablaze  with  anger 
and  regret  that  he  could  not  kill  his  enemy.  Justice  could 
only  hope  that  the  Church  might  effect  something  at  the  last 
moment.  Again  and  again  the  des  Vanneaulx  applied  to  the 
Abbe  Pascal,  the  prison  chaplain.  The  Abbe  Pascal  was  not 
deficient  in  the  peculiar  quality  which  gains  a  priest  a  hear- 
ing from  a  prisoner.  In  the  name  of  religion,  he  braved  Tas- 
cheron's  transports  of  rage,  and  strove  to  utter  a  few  words 
amidst  the  storms  that  convulsed  that  powerful  nature.  But 
the  struggle  between  spiritual  paternity  and  the  tempest  of 


68  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

uncontrolled  passions  was  too  much  for  poor  Abbe  Pascal  j 
he  retired  from  it  defeated  and  worn  out. 

"That  is  a  man  who  has  found  his  heaven  here  on  earth." 
the  old  priest  murmured  softly  to  himself. 

Then  little  Mme.  des  Vanneaulx  thought  of  approaching 
the  criminal  herself,  and  took  counsel  of  her  friends.  The 
Sieur  des  Vanneaulx  talked  of  compromise.  Being  at  his  wits' 
end,  he  even  betook  himself  to  M.  de  Granville,  and  suggested 
that  he  (M.  de  Granville)  should  intercede  with  the  King  for 
his  uncle's  murderer  if  only,  if  only,  the  murderer  would  hand 
over  those  hundred  thousand  francs  to  the  proper  persons. 
The  avocat  general  retorted  that  the  King's  Majesty  would  not 
stoop  to  haggle  with  criminals.  Then  the  des  Vanneaulx  tried 
Tascheron's  counsel,  offering  him  twenty  per  cent  on  the 
total  amount  as  an  inducement  to  recover  it  for  them.  This 
lawyer  was  the  one  creature  whom  Tascheron  could  see  with- 
out flying  into  a  fury;  him,  therefore,  the  next-of-kin  em- 
powered to  offer  ten  per  cent  to  the  murderer,  to  be  paid  over 
to  the  man's  family.  But  in  spite  of  the  mutilations  which 
these  beavers  were  prepared  to  make  in  their  heritage,  in 
spite  of  the  lawyer's  eloquence,  Tascheron  continued  obdurate. 
Then  the  des  Vanneaulx,  waxing  wroth,  anathematized  the 
condemned  man  and  called  down  curses  upon  his  head. 

"He  is  not  only  a  murderer,  he  has  no  sense  of  decency !" 
cried  they,  in  all  seriousness,  ignorant  though  they  were  of 
the  famous  Plaint  of  Fualdes.  The  Abbe  Pascal  had  totally 
failed,  the  application  for  a  reversal  of  judgment  seemed 
likely  to  succeed  no  better,  the  man  would  go  to  the  guillotine, 
and  then  all  would  be  lost. 

"What  good  will  our  money  be  to  him  where  he  is  going?" 
they  wailed.  "A  murder  you  can  understand,  but  to  steal  a 
thing  that  is  of  no  use !  The  thing  is  inconceivable.  What 
times  we  live  in,  to  be  sure,  when  people  of  quality  take  an  in- 
terest in  such  a  bandit !  He  does  not  deserve  it." 

"He  has  very  little  sense  of  honor,"  said  Mme.  des  Van- 
neaulx. 

"Still,  suppose  that  giving  up  the  money  should  compro- 
mise his  sweetheart !"  suggested  an  old  maid. 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  6& 

"We  would  keep  his  secret,"  cried  the  Sieur  des  Van* 
neaulx. 

"But  then  you  would  become  accessories  after  the  fact/7  ob- 
jected a  lawyer. 

"Oh !  the  scamp  !"  This  was  the  Sieur  des  Vannoaulx  con- 
clusion of  the  whole  matter. 

The  des  Vanneaulx's  debates  were  reported  with  some 
amusement  to  Mme.  Graslin  by  one  of  her  circle,  a  very 
clever  woman,  a  dreamer  and  idealist,  for  whom  everything 
must  be  faultless.  The  speaker  regretted  the  condemned 
man's  fury;  she  would  have  had  him  cold,  calm,  and  dig- 
nified. 

"Do  you  not  see,"  said  Veronique,  "that  he  is  thrusting 
temptation  aside  and  baffling  their  efforts  ?  He  is  deliberately 
acting  like  a  wild  beast." 

"Besides,"  objected  a  Parisienne  in  exile,  "he  is  not  a  gen- 
tleman, he  is  only  a  common  man." 

"If  he  had  been  a  gentleman,  it  would  have  been  all  over 
with  that  unknown  woman  long  ago,"  Mme.  Graslin  an- 
swered. 

These  events,  twisted  and  tortured  in  drawing-rooms  and 
family  circles,  made  to  bear  endless  constructions,  picked  to 
pieces  by  the  most  expert  tongues  in  the  town,  all  contributed 
to  invest  the  criminal  with  a  painful  interest,  when,  two 
months  later,  the  appeal  for  mercy  was  rejected  by  the  Su- 
preme Court.  How  would  he  bear  himself  in  his  last  mo- 
ments? He  had  boasted  that  he  would  make  so  desperate  a 
fight  for  his  life  that  it  was  impossible  that  he  should  lose  it. 
Would  he  confess  ? — Would  his  conduct  belie  his  language  ? — 
Which  side  would  win  their  wagers? — Are  you  going  to  be 
there  ? — Are  you  not  going  ? — How  are  we  to  go  ?  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  the  distance  from  the  prison  of  Limoges  to  the 
place  of  execution  is  very  short,  sparing  the  dreadful  ordeal 
of  a  long  transit  to  the  prisoner,  but  also  limiting  the  number 
of  fashionable  spectators.  The  prison  is  in  the  same  building 
as  the  Palais  de  Justice,  at  the  corner  of  the  Eue  du  Palais 

and  the  Hue  du  Pont-Herisson.     The  Rue  du  Palais  is  the 
6 


70  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

direct  continuation  of  the  short  Rue  de  Monte-a-Regret 
which  leads  to  the  Place  d'Aine  or  des  Arenes,  where  execu- 
tions take  place  (hence,  of  course,  its  name).  The  way,  as 
has  been  said,  is  very  short,  consequently  there  are  not  many 
houses  along  it,  and  but  few  windows.  What  persons  of 
fashion  would  care  to  mingle  with  the  crowd  in  the  square  on 
such  an  occasion? 

But  the  execution  expected  from  day  to  day  was  day  after 
day  put  off,  to  the  great  astonishment  of  the  town,  and  for 
the  following  reasons :  The  pious  resignation  of  the  greatest 
scoundrels  on  their  way  to  death  is  a  triumph  reserved  for  the 
Church,  and  a  spectacle  which  seldom  fails  to  impress  the 
crowd.  Setting  the  interests  of  Christianity  totally  aside 
(although  this  is  a  principle  never  lost  sight  of  by  the 
Church),  the  condemned  man's  repentance  is  too  strong  a 
testimony  to  the  power  of  religion  for  the  clergy  not  to  feel 
that  a  failure  on  those  conspicuous  occasions  is  a  heart- 
breaking misfortune.  This  feeling  was  aggravated  in  1829, 
for  party  spirit  ran  high  and  poisoned  everything,  however 
small,  which  had  any  bearing  on  politics.  The  Liberals  were 
in  high  glee  at  the  prospect  of  a  public  collapse  of  the  "priestly 
party,"  an  epithet  invented  by  Montlosier,  a  Royalist  who 
went  over  to  the  Constitutionals  and  was  carried  by  his  new 
associates  further  than  he  intended.  A  party,  in  its  corporate 
capacity,  is  guilty  of  disgraceful  actions  which  in  an  in- 
dividual would  be  infamous,  and  so  it  happens  that  when  one 
man  stands  out  conspicuous  as  the  expression  and  incarna- 
tion of  that  party,  in  the  eyes  of  the  crowd  he  is  apt  to  be- 
come a  Robespierre,  a  Judge  Jeffreys,  a  Laubardemont — a 
sort  of  altar  of  expiation  to  which  others  equally  guilty  attach 
ex  votos  in  secret. 

There  was  an  understanding  between  the  episcopal  authori- 
ties and  the  police  authorities,  and  still  the  execution  was  put 
off,  partly  to  secure  a  triumph  for  religion,  bat  quite  as  much 
for  another  reason — by  the  aid  of  religion  justice  hoped  to 
arrive  at  the  truth.  The  power  of  the  public  prosecutor, 
however,  had  its  limits;  sooner  or  later  the  sentence  must  be 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  71 

carried  out;  and  the  very  Liberals  who  insisted,  for  the  sake 
of  opposition,  on  Tascheron's  innocence,  and  had  tried  to 
upset  the  case,  now  began  to  grumble  at  the  delay.  Opposi- 
tion, when  systematic,  is  apt  to  fall  into  inconsistencies;  for 
the  point  in  question  is  not  to  be  in  the  right,  but  to  have 
a  stone  always  ready  to  sling  at  authority.  So  towards  the 
beginning  of  August,  the  hand  of  authority  was  forced  by  the 
clamor  (often  a  chance  sound  echoed  by  empty  heads)  called 
public  opinion.  The  execution  was  announced. 

In  this  extremity  the  Abbe  Dutheil  took  it  upon  himself  to 
suggest  a  last  resource  to  the  bishop.  One  result  of  the  suc- 
cess of  this  plan  will  be  the  introduction  of  another  actor  in 
the  judicial  drama,  the  extraordinary  personage  who  forms 
a  connecting-link  between  the  different  groups  in  it;  the 
greatest  of  all  the  figures  in  this  Scene;  the  guide  who  should 
hereafter  bring  Mme.  Graslin  on  a  stage  where  her  virtues 
were  to  shine  forth  with  the  brightest  lustre ;  where  she  would 
exhibit  a  great  and  noble  charity,  and  act  the  part  of  a  Chris- 
tian and  a  ministering  angel. 

The  Bishop's  palace  at  Limoges  stands  on  the  hillside  above 
the  Vienne.  The  gardens,  laid  out  in  terraces  supported  by 
solidly  built  walls,  crowned  by  balustrades,  descend  stepwise, 
following  the  fall  of  the  land  to  the  river.  The  sloping  ridge 
rises  high  enough  to  give  the  spectator  on  the  opposite  bank 
the  impression  that  the  Faubourg  Saint-Etienne  nestles  at 
the  foot  of  the  lowest  terrace  of  the  Bishop's  garden.  Thence, 
as  you  walk  in  one  direction,  you  look  out  across  the  river, 
and  in  the  other  along  its  course  through  the  broad  fertile 
landscape.  When  the  Vienne  has  flowed  westwards  past  the 
palace  gardens,  it  takes  a.  sudden  turn  towards  Limoges, 
skirting  the  Faubourg  Saint-Martial  in  a  graceful  curve.  A 
little  further,  and  beyond  the  suburb,  it  passes  a  charming 
country  house  called  the  Cluzeau.  You  can  catch  a  glimpse 
of  the  walls  from  the  nearest  point  of  the  nearest  terrace,  a 
trick  of  the  perspective  uniting  them  with  the  church  towers 
of  the  suburb.  Opposite  the  Cluzeau  lies  the  island  in  the 
river,  with  its  indented  shores,  its  thick  growing  poplars  and 


72  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

forest-trees,  trie  island  which  Veronique  in  her  girlhood  called 
the  Isle  of  France.  Eastwards,  the  low  hills  shut  in  the 
horizon  like  the  walls  of  an  'amphitheatre. 

The  charm  of  the  situation  and  the  rich  simplicity  of  the 
architecture  of  the  palace  mark  it  out  among  the  other  build- 
ings of  a  town  not  conspicuously  happy  in  the  choice  or  em- 
ployment of  its  building  materials.  The  view  from  the  gar- 
dens, which  attracts  travelers  in  search  of  the  picturesque, 
had  long  been  familiar  to  the  Abbe  Dutheil.  He  had  brought 
M.  de  Grancour  with  him  this  evening,  and  went  down  from 
terrace  to  terrace,  taking  no  heed  of  the  sunset  shedding  its 
crimson  and  orange  and  purple  over  the  balustrades  along 
the  steps,  the  houses  on  the  suburb,  and  the  waters  of  the 
river.  He  was  looking  for  the  Bishop,  who  at  that  moment 
sat  under  the  vines  in  a  corner  of  the  furthest  terrace,  taking 
his  dessert,  and  enjoying  the  charms  of  the  evening  at  his 
ease. 

The  long  shadows  cast  by  the  poplars  on  the  island  fell 
like  a  bar  across  the  river;  the  sunlight  lit  up  their  topmost 
crests,  yellowed  somewhat  already,  and  turned  the  leaves  to 
gold.  The  glow  of  the  sunset,  differently  reflected  from  the 
different  masses  of  green,  composed  a  glorious  harmony  of 
subdued  and  softened  color.  A  faint  evening  breeze  stirring 
in  the  depths  of  the  valley  ruffled  the  surface  of  the  Vienne 
into  a  broad  sheet  of  golden  ripples  that  brought  out  in  con- 
trast all  the  sober  hues  of  the  roofs  in  the  Faubourg  Saint- 
Etienne.  The  church  towers  and  house-tops  of  the  Faubourg 
Saint-Martial  were  blended  in  the  sunlight  with  the  vine 
stems  of  the  trellis.  The  faint  hum  of  the  country  town,  half 
hidden  in  the  re-entering  curve  of  the  river,  the  softness  of 
the  air, — all  sights  and  sounds  combined  to  steep  the  pre- 
late in  the  calm  recommended  for  the  digestion  by  the  authors 
of  every  treatise  on  that  topic.  Unconsciously  the  Bishop 
fixed  his  eyes  on  the  right  bank  of  the  river,  on  a  spot  where 
the  lengthening  shadows  of  the  poplars  in  the  island  had 
reached  the  bank  by  the  Faubourg  Saint-E*tienne,  and  dark- 
ened the  walls  of  the  garden  close  to  the  scene  of  the  double 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  73 

murder  of  old  Pingret  and  the  servant;  and  just  as  his  snug 
felicity  of  the  moment  was  troubled  by  the  difficulties  which 
his  vicars-general  recalled  to  his  recollection,  the  Bishop's  ex- 
pression grew  inscrutable  by  reason  of  many  thoughts.  The 
two  subordinates  attributed  his  absence  of  mind  to  ennui; 
but,  on  the  contrary.,  the  Bishop  had  just  discovered  in  the 
sands  of  the  Vienne  the  key  to  the  puzzle,  the  clue  which  the 
des  Vanneaulx  and  the  police  were  seeking  in  vain. 

"My  lord,"  began  the  Abbe  de  Grancour,  as  he  came  up  to 
the  Bishop,  "everything  has  failed;  we  shall  have  the  sorrow 
of  seeing  that  unhappy  Tascheron  die  in  mortal  sin.  He  will 
bellow  the  most  awful  blasphemies;  he  will  heap  insults  on 
poor  Abbe  Pascal ;  he  will  spit  on  the  crucifix,  and  deny  every- 
thing, even  hell-fire." 

"He  will  frighten  the  people,"  said  the  Abbe  Dutheil.  "The 
very  scandal  and  horror  of  it  will  cover  our  defeat  and  our 
inability  to  prevent  it.  So,  as  I  was  saying  to  M.  de  Grancour 
as  we  came,  may  this  scene  drive  more  than  one  sinner  back 
to  the  bosom  of  the  Church." 

His  words  seemed  to  trouble  the  Bishop,  who  laid  down 
the  bunch  of  grapes  which  he  was  stripping  on  the  table, 
wiped  his  fingers,  and  signed  to  his  two  vicars-general  to  be 
seated. 

"The  Abbe  Pascal  has  managed  badly,"  said  he  at  last. 

"He  is  quite  ill  after  the  last  scene  with  the  prisoner,"  said 
the  Abbe  de  Grancour.  "If  he  had  been  well  enough  to  come, 
we  should  have  brought  him  with  us  to  explain  the  difficulties 
which  put  all  the  efforts  which  your  lordship  might  command 
out  of  our  power." 

"The  condemned  man  begins  to  sing  obscene  songs  at  the 
top  of  his  voice  when  he  sees  one  of  us;  the  noise  drowns 
every  word  as  soon  as  you  try  to  make  yourself  heard,"  said 
a  young  priest  who  was  sitting  beside  the  Bishop. 

The  young  speaker  leant  his  right  elbow  on  the  table, 
his  white  hand  drooped  carelessly  over  the  bunches  of  grapes 
as  he  selected  the  reddest  berries,  with  the  air  of  being  per- 
fectly at  home.  He  had  a  charming  face,  and  seemed  to  b€ 


74  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

either  a  table-companion  or  a  favorite  with  the  Bishop,  and 
was  in  fact  a  favorite  and  the  prelate's  table-companion.  As 
the  younger  brother  of  the  Baron  de  Eastignac  he  was  con- 
nected with  the  Bishop  of  Limoges  by  the  ties  of  family  re- 
lationship and  affection.  Considerations  of  fortune  had  in- 
duced the  young  man  to  enter  the  Church;  and  the  Bishop, 
aware  of  this,  had  taken  his  young  relative  as  his  private  sec- 
retary until  such  time  as  advancement  might  befall  him; 
for  the  Abbe  Gabriel  bore  a  name  which  predestined  him  to 
the  highest  dignities  of  the  Church. 

"Then  have  you  been  to  see  him,  my  son?"  asked  the 
Bishop. 

"Yes,  my  lord.  As  soon  as  I  appeared)  the  miserable  man 
poured  out  a  torrent  of  the  most  disgusting  language  against 
you  and  me;  his  behavior  made  it  impossible  for  a  priest  to 
stay  with  him.  Will  you  permit  me  to  offer  you  a  piece  of 
advice,  my  lord  ?" 

"Let  us  hear  the  wisdom  which  God  sometimes  puts  into 
the  mouth  of  babes,"  said  the  Bishop. 

"Did  He  not  cause  Balaam's  ass  to  speak  ?"  the  young  Abbe 
de  Eastignac  retorted  quickly. 

"According  to  some  commentators,  the  ass  was  not  very 
well  aware  of  what  she  was  saying,"  the  Bishop  answered, 
laughing. 

Both  the  vicars-general  smiled.  In  the  first  place,  it  was 
the  Bishop's  joke;  and  in  the  second,  it  glanced  lightly  on 
this  young  Abbe,  of  whom  all  the  dignitaries  and  ambitious 
churchmen  grouped  about  the  Bishop  were  envious. 

"My  advice  would  be  to  beg  M.  de  Granville  to  put  off 
the  execution  for  a  few  days  yet.  If  the  condemned  man 
knew  that  he  owed  those  days  of  grace  to  our  intercession,  he 
would  perhaps  make  some  show  of  listening  to  us,  and  if  he 
listens " 

"He  will  persist  in  his  conduct  when  he  sees  what  comes 
of  it,"  said  the  Bishop,  interrupting  his  favorite. — "Gentle- 
men," he  resumed  after  a  moment's  pause,  "is  the  town 
acquainted  with  these  details  ?" 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  75 

wUl  you  find  the  house  where  they  are  not  dis- 
cussed ?"  answered  the  Abbe  de  Grancour.  "The  condition  of 
our  good  Abbe  Pascal  since  his  last  interview  is  matter  of 
common  talk  at  this  moment." 

"When  is  Tascheron  to  be  executed?"  asked  the  Bishop. 

"To-morrow.    It  is  market  day,"  replied  M.  de  Grancour. 

"Gentlemen,  religion  must  not  be  vanquished,"  cried  the 
Bishop.  "The  more  attention  is  attracted  to  this  affair,  the 
more  determined  am  I  to  secure  a  signal  triumph.  The 
Church  is  passing  through  a  difficult  crisis.  Miracles  are 
called  for  here  among  an  industrial  population,  where  sedi- 
tion has  spread  itself  and  taken  root  far  and  wide ;  where  re- 
ligious and  monarchical  doctrines  are  regarded  with  a  critical 
spirit ;  where  nothing  is  respected  by  a  system  of  analysis  de- 
rived from  Protestantism  by  the  so-called  Liberalism  of  to- 
day, which  is  free  to  take  another  name  to-morrow.  Go  to 
M.  de  Granville,  gentlemen,  he  is  with  us  heart  and  soul; 
tell  him  that  we  ask  for  a  few  days'  respite.  I  will  go  to  see 
the  unhappy  man." 

"You,  my  lord !"  cried  the  Abbe  de  Eastignac.  "Will  not 
too  much  be  compromised  if  you  fail?  You  should  only  go 
when  success  is  assured." 

"If  my  Lord  Bishop  will  permit  me  to  give  my  opinion," 
said  the  Abbe  Dutheil,  "I  think  that  I  can  suggest  a  means 
of  securing  the  triumph  of  religion  under  these  melancholy 
circumstances." 

The  Bishop's  response  was  a  somewhat  cool  sign  of  as- 
sent, which  showed  how  low  his  vicar-general's  credit  stood 
with  him.  i 

"If  any  one  has  any  ascendency  over  his  rebellious  soul, 
and  may  bring  it  to  God,  it  is  M.  Bonnet,  the  cure  of  the 
village  where  the  man  was  born,"  the  Abbe  Dutheil  went 
on. 

"One  of  your  proteges,"  remarked  the  Bishop. 

"My  lord,  M.  Bonnet  is  one  of  those  who  recommend 
themselves  by  their  militant  virtues  and  evangelical  labors." 

This  answer,  so  modest  and  simple,  was  received  with  a 


76  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

silence  which  would  have  disconcerted  any  one  but  the  Abbe 
Dutheil.  He  had  alluded  to  merits  which  had  been  over- 
looked, and  the  three  who  heard  him  chose  to  regard  the 
words  as  one  of  the  meek  sarcasms,  neatly  put,  impossible  to 
resent,  in  which  churchmen  excel,  accustomed  as  they  are  by 
their  training  to  say  the  thing  they  mean  without  transgress- 
ing the  severe  rules  laid  down  for  them  in  the  least  particular. 
But  it  was  nothing  of  the  kind;  the  Abbe  never  thought  of 
himself.  Then — 

"I  have  heard  of  Saint  Aristides  for  too  long,"  the  Bishop 
made  answer,  smiling.  "If  I  were  to  leave  his  light  under 
a  bushel,  it  would  be  injustice  or  prejudice  on  my  part.  Your 
Liberals  cry  up  your  M.  Bonnet  as  if  he  were  one  of  them- 
selves ;  I  mean  to  see  this  rural  apostle  and  judge  for  myself. 
Go  to  the  public  prosecutor,  gentlemen,  and  ask  him  in  my 
name  for  a  respite;  I  will  await  his  answer  before  despatch- 
ing our  well-beloved  Abbe  Gabriel  to  Montegnac  to  fetch  the 
holy  man  for  us.  We  will  put  his  Beatitude  in  the  way  of 
working  a  miracle  .  .  ." 

The  Abbe  Dutheil  flushed  red  at  these  words  from  the  pre- 
late-noble, but  he  chose  to  disregard  any  slight  that  they 
might  contain  for  him.  Both  vicars-general  silently  took 
their  leave,  and  left  the  Bishop  alone  with  his  young  friend. 

"The  secrets  of  the  confessional  which  we  require  lie  buried 
there,  no  doubt,"  said  the  Bishop,  pointing  to  the  shadows  of 
the  poplars  where  they  reached  a  lonely  house  half-way  be- 
tween the  island  and  the  Faubourg  Saint-^'tienne. 

"So  I  have  always  thought,"  Gabriel  answered.  "I  am  not 
a  judge,  and  I  do  not  care  to  play  the  spy;  but  if  I  had  been 
the  examining  magistrate,  I  should  know  the  name  of  the 
woman  who  is  trembling  now  at  every  sound,  at  every  word 
that  is  uttered,  compelled  all  the  while  to  wear  a  smooth,  un- 
clouded brow  under  pain  of  accompanying  the  condemned 
man  to  his  death.  Yet  she  has  nothing  to  fear.  I  havo  ?ocn 
the  man — he  will  carry  the  secret  of  his  passionate  love  to 
his  grave." 

"Crafty  young  man !"  said  the  Bishop,  pinching  his  secre- 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  77 

tary's  ear,  as  he  pointed  out  a  spot  between  the  island  in  the 
river  and  the  Faubourg  Saint-Etienne,  lit  up  by  a  last  red 
ray  from  the  sunset.  The  young  priest's  eyes  had  been  fixed 
on  it  as  he  spoke.  "Justice  ought  to  have  searched  there;  is 
it  not  so?" 

"I  went  to  see  the  criminal  to  try  the  effect  of  my  guess 
upon  him;  but  he  is  watched  by  spies,  and  if  I  had  spoken 
audibly,  I  might  have  compromised  the  woman  for  whom  he 
is  dying." 

"Let  us  keep  silence,"  said  the  Bishop.  "We  are  not  con- 
cerned with  man's  justice.  One  head  will  fall,  and  that  is 
enough.  Besides,  sooner  or  later,  the  secret  will  return  to  the 
Church." 

The  perspicacity  of  the  priest,  fostered  by  the  habit  of 
meditation,  is  far  keener  than  the  insight  of  the  lawyer  and 
the  detective.  After  all  the  preliminary  investigations,  after 
the  legal  inquiry,  and  the  trial  at  the  Assizes,  the  Bishop  and 
his  secretary,  looking  down  from  the  height  of  the  terrace, 
had  in  truth,  by  dint  of  contemplation,  succeeded  in  discover- 
ing details  as  yet  unknown. 

M.  de  Granville  was  playing  his  evening  game  of  whist  in 
Mme.  Graslin's  house,  and  his  visitors  were  obliged  to  wait 
for  his  return.  It  was  near  midnight  before  his  decision  was 
known  at  the  palace,  and  by  two  o'clock  in  the  morning  the 
Abbe  Gabriel  started  out  for  Montegnac  in  the  Bishop's  own 
traveling  carriage,  lent  to  him  for  the  occasion.  The  place 
is  about  nine  leagues  distant  from  Limoges;  it  lies  under 
the  mountains  of  the  Correze,  in  that  part  of  Limousin 
which  borders  on  the  department  of  the  Creuse.  All  Limoges, 
when  the  Abbe  left  it,  was  in  a  ferment  of  excitement  over  the 
execution  promised  for  this  day,  an  expectation  destined  to  be 
balked  once  more. 


78  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

III 

THE  CUB^f  OF  MONT^GNAC 

IN  priests  and  fanatics  there  is  a  certain  tendency  to  insist 
upon  the  very  utmost  to  which  they  are  legally  entitled  where 
their  interests  are  concerned.  Is  this  a  result  of  poverty  ?  Is 
an  egoism  which  favors  the  development  of  greed  one  of  the 
consequences  of  isolation  upon  a  man's  character?  Or  are 
shrewd  business  habits,  as  well  as  parsimony,  acquired  by  a 
course  of  management  of  charitable  funds?  Each  tempera- 
ment suggests  a  different  explanation,  but  the  fact  remains 
the  same  whether  it  lurks  (as  not  seldom  happens)  beneath 
urbane  good-humor,  or  (and  equally  often)  is  openly  mani- 
fested; and  the  difficulty  of  putting  the  hand  in  the  pocket 
is  evidently  increasingly  felt  on  a  journey. 

Gabriel  de  Eastignac,  the  prettiest  young  gentleman  who 
had  bowed  his  head  before  the  altar  of  the  tabernacle  for 
some  time,  only  gave  thirty  sous  to  the  postilions,  and  trav- 
eled slowly  accordingly.  The  postilion  tribe  drive  with  all 
due  respect  a  bishop  who  does  but  pay  twice  the  amount  de- 
manded of  ordinary  mortals,  but  at  the  same  time,  they  are 
careful  not  to  damage  the  episcopal  equipage,  for  fear  of 
getting  themselves  into  trouble.  The  Abbe,  traveling  alone 
for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  spoke  mildly  at  each  relay : 

"Just  drive  on  a  little  faster,  can't  you?" 

"You  can't  get  the  whip  to  work  without  a  little  palm- 
oil,"  an  old  postilion  replied,  and  the  young  Abbe,  much 
mystified,  fell  back  in  a  corner  of  the  carriage.  He  amused 
himself  by  watching  the  landscape  through  which  they  were 
traveling,  and  walked  up  a  hill  now  and  again  on  the  winding 
road  from  Bordeaux  to  Lyons. 

Five  leagues  beyond  Limoges  the  country  changes.  You 
have  left  behind  the  charming  low  hills  about  the  Vienne  and 
the  fair  meadow  slopes  of  Limousin,  which  sometimes  (and 
this  particularly  about  Saint-Leonard)  put  you  in  mind  of 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  79 

Switzerland.  Yon  find  yourself  in  a  wilder  and  sterner  dis- 
trict. Wide  moors,  vast  steppes  without  grass  or  herds  of 
horses,  stretch  away  to  the  mountains  of  the  Correze  on  the 
horizon.  The  far-off  hills  do  not  tower  above -the  plain,  a 
grandly  rent  wall  of  rock  like  the  Alps  in  the  south ;  you  look 
in  vain  for  the  desolate  peaks  and  glowing  gorges  of  the  Apen- 
Tiine,  or  for  the  majesty  of  the  Pyrenees — the  curving  wave- 
like  swell  of  the  hills  of  the  Correze  bears  witness  to  their 
origin,  to  the  peaceful  slow  subsidence  of  the  waters  which 
once  overwhelmed  this  country. 

These  undulations,  characteristic  of  this,  and,  indeed,  of 
most  of  the  hill  districts  of  France,  have  perhaps  contributed 
quite  as  much  as  the  climate  to  gain  for  the  land  its  title  of 
"the  kindly,"  which  Europe  has  confirmed.  But  it  is  a  dreary 
transition  country  which  separates  Limousin  from  the 
provinces  of  Marche  and  Auvergne.  In  the  mind  of  the 
poet  and  thinker  who  crosses  it,  it  calls  up  visions  of  the  In- 
finite (a  terrible  thought  for  certain  souls) ;  a  woman  look- 
ing out  on  its  monotonous  sameness  is  driven  to  muse;  and 
to  those  who  must  dwell  with  the  wilderness,  nature  shows 
herself  stubborn,  peevish,  and  barren ;  'tis  a  churlish  soil  that 
covers  these  wide  gray  plains. 

Only  the  neighborhood  of  a  great  capital  can  work  such  a 
miracle  as  transformed  Brie  during  the  last  two  centuries. 
Here  there  is  no  large  settlement  which  sometimes  puts  life 
into  the  waste  lands  which  the  agricultural  economist  re- 
gards as  blanks  in  creation,  spots  where  civilization  groans 
aghast,  and  the  tourist  finds  no  inns  and  a  total  absence  of 
that  picturesque  in  which  he  delights. 

But  to  lofty  spirits  the  moors,  the  shadows  needed  in  the 
vast  picture  of  nature,  are  not  repellent.  In  our  own  day, 
Fenimore  Cooper,  owner  of  so  melancholy  a  talent,  has  set 
forth  the  mysterious  charm  of  great  solitudes  magnificently 
in  The  Prairie.  But  the  wastes  shunned  by  every  form  of 
plant  life,  the  barren  soil  covered  with  loose  stones  and  water- 
borne  pebbles,  the  "bad  lands"  of  the  earth — are  so  many 
challenges  to  civilization.  France  must  face  her  difficulties 


80 

and  find  a  solution  for  them,  as  the  British  are  doing;  their 
patient  heroism  is  turning  the  most  barren  heather  land  in 
Scotland  into  productive  farms.  Left  to  their  primitive  deso- 
lation, these'  fallows  produce  a  crop  of  discouragement,  of 
idleness,  of  poor  physique  from  insufficient  food,  and  crime, 
whenever  want  grows  too  clamorous.  In  these  few  words,  you 
have  the  past  history  of  Montegnac. 

What  is  there  to  be  done  when  a  waste  on  so  vast  a  scale 
is  neglected  by  the  administration,  deserted  by  the  nobles, 
execrated  by  workers?  Its  inhabitants  declare  war  against 
a  social  system  which  refuses  to  do  its  duty,  and  so  it  was 
in  former  times  with  the  folk  of  Montegnac.  They  lived, 
like  Highlanders,  by  murder  and  rapine.  At  sight  of  that 
country  a  thoughtful  observer  could  readily  imagine  how  that 
only  twenty  years  ago  the  people  of  the  village  were  at  war 
with  society  at  large. 

The  wide  plateau,  cut  away  on  one  side  by  the  Vienne,  on 
another  by  the  lovely  valleys  of  Marche,  bounded  by  Auvergne 
to  the  east,  and  shut  in  by  the  mountains  of  the  Corr&ze  on 
the  south,  is  very  much  like  (agriculture  apart)  the  uplands 
of  Beauce,  which  separate  the  basin  of  the  Loire  from  the 
basin  of  the  Seine,  or  the  plateaux  of  Touraine  or  of  Berri, 
or  many  others  of  these  facets,  as  it  were,  on  the  surface  of 
France,  so  numerous  that  they  demand  the  careful  attention 
of  the  greatest  administrators. 

It  is  an  unheard-of  thing  that  while  people  complain 
that  the  masses  are  discontented  with  their  condition,  and 
constantly  aspiring  towards  social  elevation,  a  government 
cannot  find  a  remedy  for  this  in  a  country  like  France,  where 
statistics  show  that  there  are  millions  of  acres  of  land  lying 
idle,  and  in  some  cases  (as  in  Berri)  covered  with  leaf  mould 
seven  or  eight  feet  thick!  A  good  deal  of  this  land  which 
should  support  whole  villages,  and  yield  a  magnificent  return 
to  cultivation,  is  the  property  of  pig-headed  communes  which 
refuse  to  sell  to  speculators  because,  forsooth,  they  wish  to 
preserve  the  right  of  grazing  some  hundred  cows  upon  it. 
Impotence  is  writ  large  over  all  these  lands,  without  a  pur- 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  81 

pose.  Yet  every  bit  of  land  will  grow  some  special  thing,  and 
neither  arms  nor  will  to  work  are  lacking,  but  administrative 
ability  and  conscience. 

Hitherto  the  upland  districts  of  France  have  been  sacri- 
ficed to  the  valleys.  The  Government  has  given  its  fostering 
protection  to  districts  well  able  to  take  care  of  themselves. 
But  most  of  these  unlucky  wastes  have  no  water  supply,  the 
first  requisite  for  cultivation.  The  mists  which  might  fertilize 
the  gray  dead  soil  by  depositing  their  oxides  are  swept  across 
them  by  the  wind.  There  are  no  trees  to  arrest  the  clouds 
and  suck  up  their  nourishing  moisture.  A  few  plantations 
here  and  there  would  be  a  godsend  in  such  places.  The  poor 
folk  who  live  in  these  wilds,  at  a  practically  impossible  dis- 
tance from  the  nearest  large  town,  are  without  a  market  for 
their  produce — if  they  have  any.  Scattered  about  on  the 
edges  of  a  forest  left  to  nature,  they  pick  up  their  firewood 
and  eke  out  a  precarious  existence  by  poaching ;  in  the  winter 
starvation  stares  them  in  the  face.  They  have  not  capital 
enough  to  grow  wheat,  for  so  poor  are  they  that  ploughs  and 
cattle  are  beyond  their  means;  and  they  live  on  chestnuts. 
If  you  have  wandered  through  some  Natural  History  Museum 
and  felt  the  indescribable  depression  which  comes  on  after 
a  prolonged  study  of  the  unvarying  brown  hues  of  the  Euro- 
pean specimens,  you  will  perhaps  understand  how  the  per- 
petual contemplation  of  the  gray  plains  must  affect  the  moral 
conditions  of  the  people  who  live  face  to  face  with  such  dis- 
heartening sterility.  There  is  no  shadow,  nor  contrast,  nor 
coolness ;  no  sight  to  stir  associations  which  gladden  the  mind. 
One  could  hail  a  stunted  crab-tree  there  as  a  friend. 

The  highroad  forked  at  length,  and  a  cross-road  branched 
off  towards  the  village  a  few  leagues  distant.  Montegnac  lying 
(as  its  name  indicates)  at  the  foot  of  a  ridge  of  hill  is  the  chief 
village  of  a  canton  on  the  borders  of  Haute- Vienne.  The  hill- 
side above  belongs  to  the  township  which  encircles  hill  coun- 
try and  plain,  indeed,  the  commune  is  a  miniature  Scotland, 
and  has  its  Highlands  and  its  Lowlands.  Only  a  league  away, 
si  the  back  of  the  hill  which  shelters  the  township,  rises  the 


82  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

first  peak  of  the  chain  of  the  Correze,  and  all  the  country 
between  is  filled  by  the  great  Forest  of  Montegnac.,  crowning 
the  slope  above  the  village,  covering  the  little  valleys  and  bleak 
undulating  land  (left  bare  in  patches  here  and  there),  climbing 
the  peak  itself,  stretching  away  to  the  north  in  a  long  narrow 
strip  which  ends  abruptly  in  a  point  on  a  steep  bank  above 
the  Aubusson  road.  That  bit  of  steep  bank  rises  above  a 
deep  hollow  through  which  the  highroad  runs  from  Lyons  to 
Bordeaux.  Many  a  time  coaches  and  foot-passengers  have 
been  stopped  in  the  darkest  part  of  the  dangerous  ravine; 
and  the  robberies  nearly  always  went  without  punishment. 
The  situation  favored  the  highwaymen,  who  escaped  by  paths 
well  known  to  them  into  their  forest  fastnesses.  In  such  a 
country  the  investigations  of  justice  find  little  trace.  People 
accordingly  shunned  that  route. 

Without  traffic  neither  commerce  nor  industry  can  exist; 
the  exchange  of  intellectual  and  material  wealth  becomes 
impossible.  The  visible  wonders  of  civilization  are  in  all 
cases  the  result  of  the  application  of  ideas  as  old  as  man.  A 
thought  in  the  mind  of  man — that  is  from  age  to  age  the 
starting-point  and  the  goal  of  all  our  civilization.  The  history 
of  Montegnac  is  a  proof  of  this  axiom  of  social  science.  When 
the  administration  found  itself  in  a  position  to  consider  the 
pressing  practical  needs  of  the  country,  the  strip  of  forest 
was  felled,  gendarmes  were  posted  to  accompany  the  diligence 
through  the  two  stages ;  but,  to  the  shame  of  the  gendarmerie 
be  it  said,  it  was  not  the  sword  but  a  voice,  not  Corporal  Cher- 
vin  but  Parson  Bonnet,  who  won  the  battle  of  civilization  by 
reforming  the  lives  of  the  people.  The  cure,  seized  with  pity 
and  compassion  for  those  poor  souls,  tried  to  regenerate  them, 
and  persevered  till  he  gained  his  end. 

After  another  hour's  journey  across  the  plains  where  flints 
succeeded  to  dust,  and  dust  to  flints,  and  flocks  of  partridges 
abode  in  peace,  rising  at  the  approach  of  the  carriage  with  a 
heavy  whirring  sound  of  their  wings,  the  Abbe  Gabriel,  like 
most  other  travelers  who  pass  that  way,  hailed  the  sight  of 
the  roofs  of  the  township  with  a  certain  pleasure.  As  you 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  83 

enter  Montegnac  you  are  confronted  by  one  of  the  queer  post- 
houses,  not  to  be  found  out  of  France.  The  signboard,  nailed 
up  with  four  nails  above  a  sorry  empty  stable,  is  a  rough 
oaken  plank  on  which  a  pretentious  postilion  has  carved  an 
inscription,  darkening  the  letters  with  ink:  Pauste  o  chevos 
it  runs.  The  door  is  nearly  always  wide  open.  The  threshold 
is  a  plank  set  up  edgewise  in  the  earth  to  keep  the  rain-water 
out  of  the  stable,  the  floor  being  below  the  level  of  the  road 
outside.  Within,  the  traveler  sees  to  his  sorrow  the  harness, 
worn,  mildewed,  mended  with  string,  ready  to  give  way  at  the 
first  tug.  The  horses  are  probably  not  to  be  seen;  they  are 
at  work  on  the  land,  or  out  at  grass,  anywhere  and  every- 
where but  in  the  stable.  If  by  any  chance  they  are  within, 
they  are  feeding.  If  the  horses  are  ready,  the  postilion  has 
gone  to  see  his  aunt  or  his  cousin,  or  gone  to  sleep,  or  he  is 
getting  in  his  hay.  Nobody  knows  where  he  is;  you  must 
wait  while  somebody  goes  to  find  him.  He  does  not  stir  until 
he  has  a  mind ;  and  when  he  comes,  it  takes,  him  an  eternity 
to  find  his  waistcoat  or  his  whip,  or  to  rub  down  his  cattle. 
The  buxom  dame  in  the  doorstep  fidgets  about  even  more 
restlessly  than  the  traveler,  and  forestalls  any  outburst  on  his 
part  by  bestirring  herself  a  good  deal  more  quickly  than  the 
horses.  She  personates  the  post-mistress  whose  husband  is 
out  in  the  fields. 

It  was  in  such  a  stable  as  this  that  the  Bishop's  favorite 
left  his  traveling  carriage.  The  wall  looked  like  maps;  the 
thatched  roof,  as  gay  with  flowers  as  a  garden  bed,  bent  under 
the  weight  of  its  growing  house-leeks.  He  asked  the  woman 
of  the  place  to  have  everything  in  readiness  for  his  departure 
in  an  hour's  time,  and  inquired  his  way  to  the  parsonage  of 
her.  The  good  woman  pointed  out  a  narrow  alley  between 
two  houses.  That  was  the  way  to  the  church,  she  said,  and 
he  would  find  the  parsonage  hard  by. 

While  the  Abbe  climbed  the  steep  path  paved  with  cobble- 
stones between  the  hedgerows  on  either  side,  the  post-mistress 
fell  to  questioning  the  post-boy.  Every  post-boy  along  the 
road  from  Limoges  had  passed  on  to  his  brother  whip  the  sur- 


84  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

mises  of  the  first  postilion  concerning  the  Bishop's  intentions. 
So  while  Limoges  was  turning  out  of  bed  and  talking  of  the 
execution  of  old  Pingret's  murderer,  the  country  folk  all 
along  the  road  were  spreading  the  news  of  the  pardon  pro- 
cured by  the  Bishop  for  the  innocent  prisoner,  and  prattling 
of  supposed  miscarriages  of  justice,  insomuch,  that  when 
Jean-Frangois  came  to  the  scaffold  at  a  later  day,  he  was  like 
to  be  regarded  as  a  martyr. 

The  Abbe  Gabriel  went  some  few  paces  along  the  footpath, 
red  with  autumn  leaves,  dark  with  blackberries  and  sloes; 
then  he  turned  and  stood,  acting  on  the  instinct  which 
prompts  us  to  make  a  survey  of  any  strange  place,  an  instinct 
which  we  share  with  the  horse  and  dog.  The  reason  of  the 
choice  of  the  sight  of  Montegnac  was  apparent;  several 
streams  broke  out  of  the  hillside,  and  a  small  river  flowed 
along  by  the  departmental  road  which  leads  from  the  town- 
ship to  the  prefecture.  Like  the  rest  of  the  villages  in  this 
plateau,  Montegnac  is  built  of  blocks  of  clay,  dried  in  the  sun ; 
if  a  fire  broke  out  in  a  cottage,  it  is  possible  that  it  might 
find  it  earth  and  leave  it  brick.  The  roofs  are  of  thatch ;  alto- 
gether, it  was  a  poor-looking  place  that  the  Bishop's  messenger 
saw.  Below  Montegnac  lay  fields  of  rye,  potatoes,  and  tur- 
nips, land  won  from  the  plain.  In  the  meadows  on  the  lowest 
elope  of  the  hillside,  watered  by  artificial  channels,  were  some 
of  the  celebrated  breed  of  Limousin  horses;  a  legacy  (so  it  is 
said)  of  the  Arab  invaders  of  France,  who  crossed  the  Pyre- 
nees to  meet  death  from  the  battle-axes  of  Charles  Martel's 
Franks,  between  Poitiers  and  Tours.  Up  above  on  the  heights 
the  soil  looked  parched.  Now  and  again  the  reddish  scorched 
surface,  burnt  bare  by  the  sun,  indicated  the  arid  soil  which 
the  chestnuts  love.  The  water,  thriftily  distributed  along 
the  irrigation  channels,  was  only  sufficient  to  keep  the  mead- 
ows fresh  and  green;  on  these  hillsides  grows  the  fine  short 
grass,  the  delicate  sweet  pasture  that  builds  you  up  a  breed  of 
horses  delicate  and  impatient  of  control,  fiery,  but  not  pos- 
sessed of  much  staying-power;  unexcelled  in  their  native 
district,  but  apt  to  change  their  character  when  they  change 
their  country. 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  85 

Some  young  mulberry  trees  indicated  an  intention  of  grow- 
ing silk.  Like  most  villages,  Montegnac  could  only  boast  a 
single  street,  to  wit,  the  road  that  ran  through  it;  but  there 
was  an  Upper  and  Lower  Montegnac  on  either  side  of  it,  each 
cut  in  two  by  a  little  pathway  running  at  right  angles  to  the 
road.  The  hillside  below  a  row  of  houses  on  the  ridge  was 
gay  with  terraced  gardens  which  rose  from  a  level  of  several 
feet  above  the  road,  necessitating  flights  of  steps,  sometimes 
of  earth,  sometimes  paved  with  cobble-stones.  A  few  old 
women,  here  and  there,  who  sat  spinning  or  looking  after  the 
children,  put  some  human  interest  into  the  picture,  and  kept 
up  a  conversation  between  Upper  and  Lower  Montegnac  by 
talking  to  each  other  across  the  road,  usually  quiet  enough. 
In  this  way  news  traveled  pretty  quickly  from  one  end  of  the 
township  to  the  other.  The  gardens  were  full  of  fruit-trees, 
cabbages,  onions,  and  pot  herbs ;  beehives  stood  in  rows  along 
the  terraces. 

A  second  parallel  row  of  cottages  lay  below  the  road,  their 
gardens  sloping  down  towards  the  little  river  which  flowed 
through  fields  of  thick-growing  hemp,  the  fruit-trees  which 
love  damp  places  marking  its  coiirse.  A  few  cottages,  the 
post-house  among  them,  nestled  in  a  hollow,  a  situation  well 
adapted  for  the  weavers  who  lived  in  them,  and  almost  every 
house  was  overshadowed  by  the  walnut-trees,  which  flourish 
best  in  heavy  soil.  At  the  further  end  of  Montegnac,  and  on 
the  same  side  of  the  road,  stood  a  house  larger  and  more  care- 
fully kept  than  the  rest ;  it  was  the  largest  of  a  group  equally 
neat  in  appearance,  a  little  hamlet  in  fact  separated  from  the 
township  by  its  gardens,  and  known  then,  as  to-day,  by  the 
name  of  "TascheronsV  The  commune  was  not  much  in 
itself,  but  some  thirty  outlying  farms  belonged  to  it.  In  the 
valley,  several  "water-lanes"  like  those  in  Berri  and  Marche 
marked  out  the  course  of  the  little  streams  with  green  fringes. 
The  whole  commune  looked  like  a  green  ship  in  the  midst 
of  a  wide  sea. 

Whenever  a  house,  a  farm,  a  village,  or  a  district  passes 
from  a  deplorable  state  to  a  more  satisfactory  condition  of 
-7 


86  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

things,  though  as  yet  scarcely  to  be  called  strikingly  pros- 
perous, the  life  there  seems  so  much  a  matter  of  course,  so 
natural,  that  at  first  sight  a  spectator  can  never  guess  how 
much  toil  went  to  the  founding  of  that  not  extraordinary  pros- 
perity; what  an  amount  of  effort,  vast  in  proportion  to  the 
strength  that  undertook  it;  what  heroic  persistence  lies  there 
buried  and  out  of  sight,  effort  and  persistence  without  which 
the  visible  changes  could  not  have  taken  place.  So  the  young 
Abbe  saw  nothing  unusual  in  the  pleasant  view  before  his 
eyes;  he  little  knew  what  that  country  had  been  before  M. 
Bonnet  came  to  it. 

He  turned  and  went  a  few  paces  further  up  the  path,  and 
soon  came  in  sight  of  the  church  and  parsonage,  about  six 
hundred  feet  above  the  gardens  of  Upper  Montegnac.  Both 
buildings,  when  first  seen  in  the  distance,  were  hard  to  dis- 
tinguish among  the  ivy-covered  stately  ruins  of  the  old  Castle 
of  Montegnac,  a  stronghold  of  the  Navarreins  in  the  twelfth 
century.  The  parsonage  house  had  every  appearance  of  being 
built  in  the  first  instance  for  a  steward  or  head  gamekeeper. 
It  stood  at  the  end  of  a  broad  terrace  planted  with  lime-trees, 
and  overlooked  the  whole  countryside.  The  ravages  of  time 
bore  witness  to  the  antiquity  of  the  flights  of  steps  and  the 
walls  which  supported  the  terrace,  the  stones  had  been  forced 
out  of  place  by  the  constant  imperceptible  thrusting  of  plant 
life  in  the  crevices,  until  tall  grasses  and  wild  flowers  had 
taken  root  among  them.  Every  step  was  covered  with  a  dark- 
green  carpet  of  fine  close  moss.  The  masonry,  solid  though  it 
was,  was  full  of  rifts  and  cracks,  where  wild  plants  of  the 
pellitory  and  camomile  tribe  were  growing;  the  maidenhair 
fern  sprang  from  the  loopholes  in  thick  masses  of  shaded 
green.  The  whole  face  of  the  wall,  in  fact,  was  hung  with 
the  finest  and  fairest  tapestry,  damasked  with  bracken  fronds, 
purple  snapdragons  with  their  golden  stamens,  blue  borage, 
and  brown  fern  and  moss,  till  the  stone  itself  was  only  seen 
by  glimpses  hece  and  there  through  its  moist,  cool  covering. 

Up  above,  upon  the  terrace,  the  clipped  box  borders  formed 
geometrical  patterns  in  a  pleasure  garden  framed  by  the 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  87 

parsonage  house,  and  behind  the  parsonage  rose  the  crags, 
a  pale  background  of  rock,  on  which  a  few  drooping,  feathery 
trees  struggled  to  live.  The  ruins  of  the  castle  towered  above 
the  house  and  the  church. 

The  parsonage  itself,  built  of  flints  and  mortar,  boasted  a 
single  story  and  garrets  above,  apparently  empty,  to  judge 
by  the  dilapidated  windows  in  either  gable  under  the  high- 
pitched  roof.  A  couple  of  rooms  on  the  ground  floor,  sepa- 
rated by  a  passage  with  a  wooden  staircase  at  the  further 
end  of  it,  two  more  rooms  on  the  second  floor,  and  a  little 
lean-to  kitchen  built  against  the  side  of  the  house  in  the 
yard,  where  a  stable  and  coach-house  stood  perfectly  empty, 
useless,  abandoned — this  was  all.  The  kitchen  garden  lay 
between  the  house  and  the  church ;  a  ruinous  covered  passage 
led  from  the  parsonage  to  the  sacristy. 

The  young  Abbe's  eyes  wandered  over  the  place.  He 
noted  the  four  windows  with  their  leaded  panes,  the  brown 
moss-grown  walls,  the  rough  wooden  door,  so  full  of  splits 
and  cracks  that  it  looked  like  a  bundle  of  matches,  and  the 
adorable  quaintness  of  it  all  by  no  means  took  his  fancy. 
The  grace  of  the  plant  life  which  covered  the  roofs,  the  wild 
climbing  flowers  that  sprang  from  the  rotting  wooden  sills 
and  cracks  in  the  wall,  the  trails  and  tendrils  of  the  vines, 
covered  with  tiny  clusters  of  grapes,  which  found  their  way 
in  through  the  windows,  as  if  they  were  fain  to  carry  merri- 
ment and  laughter  into  the  house, — all  this  he  beheld,  and 
thanked  his  stars  that  his  way  led  to  a  bishopric,  and  not 
to  a  country  parsonage. 

The  house,  open  all  day  long,  seemed  to  belong  to  every 
one.  The  Abbe  Gabriel  walked  into  the  dining-room,  which 
opened  into  the  kitchen.  The  furniture  which  met  his  eyes 
was  poor — an  old  oak  table  with  four  twisted  legs,  an  easy- 
chair  covered  with  tapestry,  a  few  wooden  chairs,  and  an  old 
chest,  which  did  duty  as  a  sideboard.  There  was  no  one  in 
that  kitchen  except  the  cat,  the  sign  of  a  woman  in  the  house. 
The  other  room  was  the  parlor ;  glancing  round  it,  the  young 
priest  noticed  that  the  easy-chairs  were  made  of  unpolished 


88  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

wood,  and  covered  with  tapestry.  The  paneling  of  the  walls, 
like  the  rafters,  was  of  chestnut  wood,  and  black  as  ebony. 
There  was  a  timepiece  in  a  green  case  painted  with  flowers, 
a  table  covered  with  a  worn  green  cloth,  one  or  two  chairs, 
and  on  the  mantelshelf  an  Infant  Jesus  in  wax  under  a 
glass  shade  set  between  two  candlesticks.  The  hearth,  sur- 
rounded by  a  rough  wooden  moulding,  was  hidden  by  a  paper 
screen  representing  the  Good  Shepherd  with  a  sheep  on  his 
shoulder.  In  this  way,  doubtless,  one  of  the  family  of  the 
mayor,  or  of  the  justice  of  the  peace,  endeavored  to  express 
his  acknowledgments  of  the  care  bestowed  on  his  training. 

The  state  of  the  house  was  something  piteous.  The  walls, 
which  had  once  been  limewashed,  were  discolored  here  and 
there,  and  rubbed  and  darkened  up  to  the  height  of  a  man's 
head.  The  wooden  staircase,  with  its  heavy  balustrades, 
neatly  kept  though  it  was,  looked  as  though  it  must  totter 
if  any  one  set  foot  on  it.  At  the  end  of  the  passage,  just  oppo- 
site the  front  door,  another  door  stood  open,  giving  the  Abbe 
Gabriel  an  opportunity  of  surveying  the  kitchen  garden,  shut 
in  by  the  wall  of  the  old  rampart,  built  of  the  white  crum- 
bling stone  of  the  district.  Fruit-trees  in  full  bearing  had 
been  trained  espalier-fashion  along  this  side  of  the  garden, 
but  the  long  trellises  were  falling  to  pieces,  and  the  vine- 
leaves  were  covered  with  blight. 

The  Abbe  went  back  through  the  house,  and  walked  along 
the  paths  in  the  front  garden.  Down  below  the  magnificent 
wide  view  of  the  valley  was  spread  out  before  his  eyes,  a  sort 
of  oasis  on  the  edge  of  the  great  plain,  which,  in  the  light 
morning  mists,  looked  something  like  a  waveless  sea.  Behind, 
and  rather  to  one  side,  the  great  forest  stretched  away  to  the 
horizon,  the  bronzed  mass  making  a  contrast  with  the  plains, 
and  on  the  other  hand  the  church  and  the  castle  perched  on 
the  crag  stood  sharply  out  against  the  blue  sky.  As  the  Abbe 
Gabriel  paced  the  tiny  paths  among  the  box-edged  diamonds, 
circles,  and  stars,  crunching  the  gravel  beneath  his  boots,  he 
looked  from  point  to  point  at  the  scene;  over  the  village, 
where  already  a  few  groups  of  gazers  had  formed  to  stare 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  89 

at  him,  at  the  valley  in  the  morning  light,  the  quickset 
hedges  that  marked  the  ways,  the  little  river  flowing  under  its 
willows,  in  such  contrast  with  the  infinite  of  the  plains.  Grad- 
ually his  impressions  changed  the  current  of  his  thoughts. 
He  admired  the  quietness,  he  felt  the  influences  of  the  pure 
air,  of  the  peace  inspired  by  a  glimpse  of  a  life  of  Biblical 
simplicity;  and  with  these  came  a  dim  sense  of  the  beauty 
of  that  life.  He  went  back  again  to  look  at  its  details  with 
a  more  serious  curiosity. 

A  little  girl,  left  in  charge  of  the  house  no  doubt,  but  busy 
pilfering  in  the  garden,  came  back  at  the  sound  of  a  man's 
shoes  creaking  on  the  flagged  pavement  of  the  ground-floor 
rooms.  In  her  confusion  at  being  caught  with  fruit  in  her 
hand  and  between  her  teeth,  she  made  no  answer  whatever 
to  the  questions  put  to  her  by  this  Abbe — young,  handsome, 
daintily  arrayed.  The  child  had  never  believed  it  possible 
that  such  an  Abbe  could  exist — radiant  in  fine  lawn,  neat  as 
a  new  pin,  and  dressed  in  fine  black  cloth  without  a  speck  or 
a  crease. 

"M.  Bonnet?"  she  echoed  at  last.  "M.  Bonnet  is  saying 
mass,  and  Mile.  Ursule  is  gone  to  the  church." 

The  covered  passage  from  the  house  to  the  sacristy  had 
escaped  the  Abbe  Gabriel's  notice ;  so  he  went  down  the  path 
again  to  enter  the  church  by  the  principal  door.  The  church 
porch  was  a  sort  of  pent-house  facing  the  village,  set  at  the 
top  of  a  flight  of  worn  and  disjointed  steps,  overlooking  a 
square  below;  planted  with  the  great  elm-trees  which  date 
from  the  time  of  the  Protestant  Sully,  and  full  of  channels 
washed  by  the  rains. 

The  church  itself,  one  of  the  poorest  in  Prance,  where 
churches  are  sometimes  very  poor,  was  not  unlike  those  huge 
barns  which  boast  a  roof  above  the  door,  supported  by  brick 
pillars  or  tree  trunks.  Like  the  parsonage  house,  it  was  built 
of  rubble,  the  square  tower  being  roofed  with  round  tiles ;  but 
Nature  had  covered  the  bare  walls  with  the  richest  tracery 
mouldings,  and  made  them  fairer  still  with  color  and  light 
and  shade,  carving  her  lines  and  disposing  her  masses,  show- 


90  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

ing  all  the  craftsman's  cunning  of  a  Michael  Angelo  in  her 
work.  The  ivy  clambered  over  both  sides,  its  sinewy  stems 
clung  to  the  walls  till  they  were  covered,  beneath  the  green 
leaves,  with  as  many  veins  as  any  anatomical  diagram.  Under 
this  mantle,  wrought  by  Time  to  hide  the  wounds  which 
Time  had  made,  damasked  by  autumn  flowers  that  grew  in 
the  crevices,  nestled  the  singing-birds.  The  rose  window  in 
the  west  front  was  bordered  with  blue  harebells,  like  the  first 
page  of  some  richly  painted  missal.  There  were  fewer  flowers 
on  the  north  side,  which  communicated  with  the  parsonage, 
though  even  there  there  were  patches  of  crimson  moss 
on  the  gray  stone,  but  the  south  wall  and  the  apse  were  cov- 
ered with  many-colored  blossoms;  there  were  a  few  saplings 
rooted  in  the  cracks,  notably  an  almond-tree,  the  symbol  of 
Hope.  Two  giant  firs  grew  up  close  to  the  wall  of  the  apse, 
and  served  as  lightning-conductors.  A  low  ruinous  wall  re- 
paired and  maintained  at  elbow  height  with  fallen  fragments 
of  its  own  masonry  ran  round  the  churchyard.  In  the  midst 
of  the  space  stood  an  iron  cross  mounted  on  a  stone  pedestal, 
strewn  with  sprigs  of  box  blessed  at  Easter,  a  reminder  of  a 
touching  Christian  rite,  now  fallen  into  disuse  except  in 
country  places.  Only  in  little  villages  and  hamlets  does  the 
priest  go  at  Eastertide  to  bear  to  his  dead  the  tidings  of  the 
Eesurrection — "You  shall  live  again  in  happiness."  Here 
and  there  above  the  grass-covered  graves  rose  a  rotten  wooden 
cross. 

The  inside  was  in  every  way  in  keeping  with  the  picturesque 
neglect  outside  of  the  poor  Church,  where  all  the  ornament 
had  been  given  by  Time,  grown  charitable  for  once.  Within, 
your  eyes  turned  at  once  to  the  roof.  It  was  -lined  with  chest- 
nut wood  and  sustained  at  equal  distances  by  strong  king- 
posts set  on  crossbeams;  age  had  imparted  to  it  the  richest 
tones  which  old  woods  can  take  in  Europe.  The  four  walls 
were  lime-washed  and  bare  of  ornament.  Poverty  had  made 
unconscious  iconoclasts  of  these  worshipers. 

Four  pointed  windows  in  the  side  walls  let  in  the  light 
through  their  leaded  panes;  the  floor  was  of  brick;  the  seats, 


91 

wooden  benches.  The  tomb-shaped  altar  bore  for  ornament 
a  great  crucifix,  beneath  which  stood  a  tabernacle  in  walnut 
wood  (its  mouldings  brightly  polished  and  clean),  eight  can- 
dlesticks (the  candles  thriftily  made  of  painted  wood),  and 
a  couple  of  china  vases  full  of  artificial  flowers,  things  that 
a  broker's  man  would  have  declined  to  look  at,  but  which 
must  serve  for  God.  The  lamp  in  the  shrine  was  simply  a 
floating-light,  like  a  night-light,  set  in  an  old  silver-plated 
holy-water  stoup,  hung  from  the  ceiling  by  silken  cords 
brought  from  the  wreck  of  some  chateau.  The  baptismal 
fonts  were  of  wood  like  the  pulpit,  and  a  sort  of  cage  where 
the  churchwardens  sat — the  patricians  of  the  place.  The 
shrine  in  the  Lady  Chapel  offered  to  the  admiration  of  the 
public  two  colored  lithographs  framed  in  a  narrow  gilded 
frame.  The  altar  had  been  painted  white,  and  adorned  with 
artificial  flowers  planted  in  gilded  wooden  flower-pots  set  on  a 
white  altar-cloth  edged  with  shabby  }^ellowish  lace. 

But  at  the  end  of  the  church  a  long  window  covered  with 
a  red  cotton  curtain  produced  a  magical  effect.  The  lime- 
washed  walls  caught  a  faint  rose  tint  from  that  glowing  crim- 
son; it  was  as  if  some  thought  divine  shone  from  the  altar 
to  fill  the  poor  place  with  warmth  and  light.  On  one  wall  of 
the  passage  which  led  into  the  sacristy  the  patron  saint  of 
the  village  had  been  carved  in  wood  and  painted — a  St.  John 
the  Baptist  and  his  sheep,  an  execrable  daub.  Yet  in  spite 
of  the  bareness  and  poverty  of  the  church,  there  was  about  the 
whole  a  subdued  harmony  which  appeals  to  those  whose 
spirits  have  been  finely  touched,  a  harmony  of  visible  and 
invisible  emphasized  by  the  coloring.  The  rich  dark  brown 
tints  of  the  wood  made  an  admirable  relief  to  the  pure  white 
of  the  walls,  and  both  blended  with  the  triumphant  crimson 
of  the  chancel  window,  an  austere  trinity  of  color  which  re- 
called the  great  doctrine  of  the  Catholic  Church. 

If  surprise  was  the  first  feeling  called  forth  by  the  sight  of 
this  miserable  house  of  God,  pity  and  admiration  followed 
quickly  upon  it.  Did  it  not  express  the  poverty  of  those  who 
worshiped  there?  Was  it  not  in  keeping  with  the  quaint 


92  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

simplicity  of  the  parsonage  ?  And  it  was  clean  and  carefully 
kept.  You  breathed,  as  it  were,  an  atmosphere  of  the  simple 
virtues  of  the  fields ;  nothing  within  spoke  of  neglect.  Primi- 
tive and  homely  though  it  was,  it  was  clothed  in  prayer;  a 
soul  pervaded  it  which  you  felt,  though  you  could  not  explain 
how. 

The  Abbe  Gabriel  slipped  in  softly,  so  as  not  to  interrupt 
the  meditations  of  two  groups  on  the  front  benches  before 
the  high-altar,  which  was  railed  off  from  the  nave  by  a  balus- 
trade of  the  inevitable  chestnut  wood,  roughly  made  enough, 
and  covered  with  a  white  cloth  for  the  Communicn.  Just 
above  the  space  hung  the  lamp.  Some  score  of  peasant  folk 
on'  either  side  were  so  deeply  absorbed  in  passionate  prayer, 
that  they  paid  no  heed  to  the  stranger  as  he  walked  up  the 
church  in  the  narrow  gangway  between  the  rows  of  benches. 
As  the  Abbe  Gabriel  stood  beneath  the  lamp,  he  could  see 
into  the  two  chancels  which  completed  the  cross  of  the  ground- 
plan  ;  one  of  them  led  to  the  sacristy,  the  other  to  the  church- 
yard. It  was  in  this  latter,  near  the  graves,  that  a  whole 
family  clad  in  black  were  kneeling  on  the  brick  floor,  for 
there  were  no  benches  in  this  part  of  the  church.  The  Abbe 
bent  before  the  altar  on  the  step  of  the  balustrade  and  knelt 
to  pray,  giving  a  side  glance  at  this  sight,  which  was  soon 
explained.  The  Gospel  was  read ;  the  cure  took  off  his  chasu- 
ble and  came  down  from  the  altar  towards  the  railing;  and 
the  Abbe,  who  had  foreseen  this,  slipped  away  and  stood 
close  to  the  wall  before  M.  Bonnet  could  see  him.  The  clock 
struck  ten. 

"My  brethren,"  said  the  cure  in  a  faltering  voice,  "even 
at  this  moment,  a  child  of  this  parish  is  paying  his  forfeit 
to  man's  justice  by  submitting  to  its  supreme  penalty.  We 
offer  the  holy  sacrifice  of  the  mass  for  the  repose  of  his  soul. 
Let  us  all  pray  together  to  God  to  beseech  Him  not  to  forsake 
that  child  in  his  last  moments,  to  entreat  that  repentance 
here  on  earth  may  find  in  Heaven  the  mercy  which  has  been 
refused  to  it  here  below.  The  ruin  of  this  unhappy  child, 
on  whom  we  had  counted  most  surely  to  set  a  good  example, 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  93 

can  only  be  attributed  to  a   lapse   from   religious  princi- 
ples— 

The  cure  was  interrupted  by  the  sound  of  sobbing  from 
the  group  of  mourners  in  the  transept ;  and  by  the  paroxysm 
of  grief  the  young  priest  knew  that  this  was  the  Tascheron 
family,  though  he  had  never  seen  them  before.  The  two 
foremost  among  them  were  old  people  of  seventy  years  at 
least.  Their  faces,  swarthy  as  a  Florentine  bronze,  were  cov- 
ered with  deep  impassive  lines.  Both  of  them,  in  their  old 
patched  garments,  stood  like  statues  close  against  the  wall; 
evidently  this  was  the  condemned  man's  grandfather  and 
grandmother.  Their  red  glassy  eyes  seemed  to  shed  tears  of 
blood;  the  old  arms  trembled  so  violently  that  the  sticks  on 
which  they  leant  made  a  faint  sound  of  scratching  on  the 
bricks.  Behind  them  the  father  and  mother,  their  faces  hid- 
den in  their  handkerchiefs,  burst  into  tears.  About  the  four 
heads  of  the  family  knelt  two  married  daughters  with  their 
husbands,  then  three  sons,  stupefied  with  grief.  Five  kneel- 
ing little  ones,  the  oldest  not  more  than  seven  years  of  age, 
understood  nothing  probably  of  all  that  went  on,  but  looked 
and  listened  with  the  apparently  torpid  curiosity,  which  in 
the  peasant  is  often  a  process  of  observation  carried  (so  far 
as  the  outward  and  visible  is  concerned)  to  the  highest  possi- 
ble pitch.  Last  of  all  came  the  poor  girl  Denise,  who  had 
been  imprisoned  by  justice,  the  martyr  to  sisterly  love;  she 
was  listening  with  an  expression  which  seemed  to  betoken 
incredulity  and  straying  thoughts.  To  her  it  seemed  impos- 
sible that  her  brother  should  die.  Her  face  was  a  wonderful 
picture  of  another  face,  that  of  one  among  the  three  Maries 
who  could  not  believe  that  Christ  was  dead,  though  she  had 
shared  the  agony  of  His  Passion.  Pale  and  dry-eyed,  as  is 
the  wont  of  those  who  have  watched  for  many  nights,  her 
freshness  had  been  withered  more  by  sorrow  than  by  work  in 
the  fields ;  but  .she  still  kept  the  beauty  of  a  country  girl,  the 
full  plump  figure,  the  shapely  red  arms,  a  perfectly  round  face, 
and  clear  eyes,  glittering  at  that  moment  with  the  light  of 
despair  in  them.  Her  throat,  firm-fleshed  and  white  below 


94  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

the  line  of  sunburned  brown,  indicated  the  rich  tissue  and 
fairness  of  the  skin  beneath  the  stuff.  The  two  married 
daughters  were  weeping;  their  husbands,  patient  tillers  of  the 
soil,  were  grave  and  sad.  None  of  the  three  sons  in  their 
sorrow  raised  their  eyes  from  the  ground. 

Only  Denise  and  her  mother  showed  any  sign  of  rebellion 
in  the  harrowing  picture  of  resignation  and  despairing 
anguish.  The  sympathy  and  sincere  and  pious  commiseration 
felt  by  the  rest  of  the  villagers  for  a  family  so  much  respected 
had  lent  the  same  expression  to  all  faces,  an  expression  which 
became  a  look  of  positive  horror  when  they  gathered  from  the 
cure's  words  that  even  in  that  moment  the  knife  would  fall. 
All  of  them  had  known  the  young  man  from  the  day  of  his 
birth,  and  doubtless  all  of  them  believed  him  to  be  incapable 
of  committing  the  crime  laid  to  his  charge.  The  sobbing 
which  broke  in  upon  the  simple  and  brief  address  grew  so 
vehement  that  the  cure's  voice  suddenly  ceased,  and  he  invited 
those  present  to  fervent  prayer. 

There  was  nothing  in  this  scene  to  surprise  a  priest,  but 
Gabriel  de  Rastignac  was  too  young  not  to  feel  deeply  moved 
by  it.  He  had  not  as  }-et  put  priestly  virtues  in  practice;  he 
knew  that  a  different  destiny  lay  before  him;  that  it  would 
never  be  his  duty  to  go  forth  into  the  social  breaches  where 
the  heart  bleeds  at  the  sight  of  suffering  on  every  side;  his 
lot  would  be  cast  among  the  upper  ranks  of  the  clergy  which 
keep  alive  the  spirit  of  sacrifice,  represent  the  highest  intelli- 
gence of  the  Church,  and,  when  occasion  calls  for  it,  display 
these  same  virtues  of  the  village  cure  on  the  largest  scale, 
like  the  great  Bishops  of  Marseilles  and  Meaux,  the  Arch- 
bishops of  Aries  and  Cambrai.  The  poor  peasants  were  pray- 
ing and  weeping  for  one  who  (as  they  believed)  was  even 
then  going  to  his  death  in  a  great  public  square,  before  a 
crowd  of  people  assembled  from  all  parts  to  see  him  die,  the 
agony  of  death  made  intolerable  for  him  by-  the  weight  of 
shame;  there  was  something  very  touching  in  this  feeble 
counterpoise  of  sympathy  and  prayer  from  a  few,  opposed 
to  the  cruel  curiosity  of  the  rabble  and  the  curses,  not  un- 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  95 

deserved.  The  poor  church  heightened  the  pathos  of  the 
contrast. 

The  Abbe  Gabriel  was  tempted  to  go  over  to  the  Tascherons 
and  cry,  "Your  son,  your  brother  has  been  reprieved!"  but 
he  shrank  from  interrupting  the  mass;  he  knew,  moreover, 
that  it  was  only  a  reprieve,  the  execution  was  sure  to  take 
place  sooner  or  later.  But  he  could  not  follow  the  service; 
in  spite  of  himself,  he  began  to  watch  the  pastor  of  whom 
the  miracle  of  conversion  was  expected. 

Out  of  the  indications  in  the  parsonage  house,  Gabriel 
de  Eastignac  had  drawn  a  picture  of  M.  Bonnet  in  his  own 
mind:  he  would  be  short  and  stout,  he  thought,  with  a  red 
powerful  face,  a  rough  working-man,  almost  like  one  of  the 
peasants  themselves,  and  tanned  by  the  sun.  The  reality 
was  very  far  from  this;  the  Abbe  Gabriel  found  himself  in 
the  presence  of  an  equal.  M.  Bonnet  was  short,  slender,  and 
weakly-looking;  yet  it  was  none  of  these  characteristics,  but 
an  impassioned  face,  such  a  face  as  we  imagine  for  an 
apostle,  which  struck  you  at  a  first  glance.  In  shape  it  was 
almost  triangular;  starting  from  the  temples  on  either  side 
of  a  broad  forehead,  furrowed  with  wrinkles,  the  meagre 
outlines  of  the  hollow  cheeks  met  at  a  point  in  the  chin.  In 
that  face,  overcast  by  an  ivory  tint  like  the  wax  of  an  altar 
candle,  blazed  two  blue  eyes,  full  of  the  light  of  faith  and 
the  fires  of  a  living  hope.  A  long  slender,  straight  nose 
divided  it  into  two  equal  parts.  The  wide  mouth  spoke  even 
when  the  full,  resolute  lips  were  closed,  and  the  voice  which 
issued  thence  was  one  of  those  which  go  to  the  heart.  The 
chestnut  hair,  thin,  smooth,  and  fine,  denoted  a  poor  physique, 
poorly  nourished.  The  whole  strength  of  the  man  lay  in  his 
will.  Such  were  his  personal  characteristics.  In  any  other 
such  short  hands  might  have  indicated  a  bent  towards  ma- 
terial pleasures ;  perhaps  he  too,  like  Socrates,  had  found  evil 
in  his  nature  to  subdue.  His  thinness  was  ungainly,  his 
shoulders  protruded  too  much,  and  he  seemed  to  be  knock- 
kneed  ;  his  bust  was  so  over  developed  in  comparison  with  his 
limbs,  that  it  gave  him  something  of  the  appearance  of  a 


96  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

hunchback  without  the  actual  deformity;  altogether,  to  an 
ordinary  observer,  his  appearance  was  not  prepossessing. 
Only  those  who  know  the  miracles  of  thought  and  faith  and 
art  can  recognize  and  reverence  the  light  that  burns  in  a 
martyr's  eyes,  the  pallor  of  steadfastness,  the  voice  of  love, — 
all  traits  of  the  Cure  Bonnet.  Here  was  a  man  worthy  of 
that  early  Church  which  no  longer  exists  save  in  the  pages 
of  the  Martyrology  and  in  pictures  of  the  sixteenth  century; 
he  bore  unmistakably  the  seal  of  human  greatness  which  most 
nearly  approaches  the  Divine;  conviction  had  set  its  mark  on 
him,  and  a  convictio-n  brings  a  salient  indefinable  beauty  into 
faces  made  of  the  commonest  human  clay;  the  devout  wor- 
shiper at  any  shrine  reflects  something  of  its  golden  glow, 
even  as  the  glory  of  a  noble  love  shines  like  a  sort  of  light 
from  a  woman's  face.  Conviction  is  human  will  come  to  its 
full  strength ;  and  being  at  once  the  cause  and  the  effect,  con- 
viction impresses  the  most  indifferent,  it  is  a  kind  of  mute 
eloquence  which  gains  a  hold  upon  the  masses. 

As  the  cure  came  down  from  the  altar,  his  eyes  fell  on  the 
Abbe  Gabriel,  whom  he  recognized;  but  when  the  Bishop's 
secretary  appeared  in  the  sacristy,  he  found  no  one  there  but 
Ursule.  Her  master  had  already  given  his  orders.  Ursule, 
a  woman  of  canonical  age,  asked  the  Abbe  de  Rastignac  to 
follow  her  along  the  passage  through  the  garden. 

"Monsieur  le  Cure  told  me  to  ask  you  whether  you  had 
breakfasted,  sir,"  she  said.  "You  must  have  started  out  from 
Limoges  .very  early  this  morning  to  be  here  by  ten  o'clock, 
so  I  will  set  about  getting  breakfast  ready.  Monsieur  1'Abbe 
will  not  find  the  Bishop's  table  here,  but  we  will  do  our  best. 
M.  Bonnet  will  not  be  long ;  he  has  gone  to  comfort  those  poor 
souls — the  Tascherons.  Something  very  terrible  is  happening 
to-day  to  one  of  their  sons." 

"But  where  do  the  poor  people  live?"  the  Abbe  Gabriel 
put  in  at  length.  "I  must  take  M.  Bonnet  back  to  Limoges 
with  me  at  once  by  the  Bishop's  orders.  The  unhappy  man  is 
not  to  be  executed  to-day;  his  lordship  has  obtained  a  re- 
prieve  -" 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  97 

"Ah !"  cried  TJrsule,  her  tongue  itching  to  spread  the  news. 
"There  will  be  plenty  of  time  to  take  that  comfort  to  the 
poor  things  whilst  I  am  getting  breakfast  ready.  The 
Tascherons  live  at  the  other  end  of  the  village.  You  follow 
the  path  under  the  terrace,  that  will  take  you  to  the  house." 

As  soon  as  the  Abbe  Gabriel  was  fairly  out  of  sight,  TJrsule 
went  down  to  take  the  tidings  to  the  village  herself,  and  to 
obtain  the  things  needed  for  breakfast. 

The  cure  had  learned,  for  the  first  time,  at  the  church 
of  a  desperate  resolve  on  the  part  of  the  Tascherons,  made 
since  the  appeal  had  been  rejected.  They  would  leave  the 
district;  they  had  already  sold  all  they  had,  and  that  very 
morning  the  money  was  to  be  paid  down.  Formalities  and 
unforeseen  delays  had  retarded  the  sale ;  they  had  been  forced 
to  stay  in  the  countryside  after  Jean-Frangois  was  condemned, 
and  every  day  had  been  for  them  a  cup  of  bitterness  to  drink. 
The  news  of  the  plan,  carried  out  so  secretly,  had  only  trans- 
pired on  the  eve  of  the  day  fixed  for  the  execution.  The 
Tascherons  had  meant  to  leave  the  place  before  the  fatal  day ; 
but  the  purchaser  of  their  property  was  a  stranger  to  the 
canton,  a  Correzein  to  whom  their  motives  were  indifferent, 
and  he  on  his  own  part  had  found  some  difficulty  in  getting 
the  money  together.  So  the  family  had  endured  the  utmost 
of  their  misery.  So  strong  was  the  feeling  of  their  disgrace 
in  these  simple  folk  who  had  never  tampered  witk  conscience, 
that  grandfather  and  grandmother,  daughters  and  sons-in- 
law,  father  and  mother,  and  all  who  bore  the  name  of  Tas- 
cheron,  or  were  connected  with  them,  were  leaving  the  place. 
Every  one  in  the  commune  was  sorry  that  they  should  go, 
and  the  mayor  had  gone  to  the  cure,  entreating  him  to  use 
his  influence  with  the  poor  mourners. 

As  the  law  now  stands,  the  father  is  no  longer  responsible 
for  his  son's  crime,  and  the  father's  guilt  does  not  attach 
to  his  children,  a  condition  of  things  in  keeping  with  other 
emancipations  which  have  weakened  the  paternal  power,  and 
contributed  to  the  triumph  of  that  individualism  which  ia 
eating  the  heart  of  society  in  our  days.  The  thinker  who 


98  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

looks  to  the  future  sees  the  extinction  of  the  spirit  of  the 
family ;  those  who  drew  up  the  new  code  have  set  in  its  place 
equality  and  independent  opinion.  The  family  will  always 
be  the  basis  of  society ;  and  now  the  family,  as  it  used  to  be, 
exists  no  longer,  it  has  come  of  necessity  to  be  a  temporary 
arrangement,  continually  broken  up  and  reunited  only  to  be 
separated  again;  the  links  between  the  future  and  the  past 
are  destroyed,  the  family  of  an  older  time  has  ceased  to  exist 
in  France.  Those  who  proceeded  to  the  demolition  of  the  old 
social  edifice  were  logical  when  they  decided  that  each  mem- 
ber of  the  family  should  inherit  equally,  lessening  the  author- 
ity of  the  father,  making  of  each  child  the  head  of  a  new 
household,  suppressing  great  responsibilities,  but  is  the  social 
system  thus  re-edified  as  solid  a  structure,  with  its  laws  of 
yesterday  unproved  by  long  experience,  as  the  old  monarchy 
was  in  spite  of  its  abuses  ?  With  the  solidarity  of  the  family, 
society  has  lost  that  elemental  force  which  Montesquieu  dis- 
covered and  called  "honor."  Society  has  isolated  its  members 
the  better  to  govern  them,  and  has  divided  in  order  to  weaken. 
The  social  system  reigns  over  so  many  units,  an  aggregation 
of  so  many  ciphers,  piled  up  like  grains  of  wheat  in  a  heap. 
Can  the  general  welfare  take  the  place  of  the  welfare  of  the 
family?  Time  holds  the  answer  to  this  great  enigma.  And 
yet — the  old  order  still  exists,  it  is  so  deeply  rooted  that  you 
find  it  most  alive  among  the  people.  It  is  still  an  active  force 
in  remote  districts  where  "prejudice,"  as  it  is  called,  likewise 
exists ;  in  old-world  nooks  where  all  the  members  of  a  family 
suffer  for  the  crime  of  one,  and  the  children  for  the  sins  of 
their  fathers. 

It  was  this  belief  which  made  their  own  countryside  intol- 
erable to  the  Tascherons.  Their  profoundly  religious  natures 
had  brought  them  to  the  church  that  morning,  for  how  was  it 
possible  to  stay  away  when  the  mass  was  said  for  their  son, 
and  prayer  offered  that  God  might  bring  him  to  a  repentance 
which  should  reopen  eternal  life  to  him  ?  and,  moreover,  must 
they  not  take  leave  of  the  village  altar?  But,  for  all  that, 
their  plans  were  made;  and  when  the  cure,  who  followed 


THE  COUNTRY   PARSON  99 

them,  entered  the  principal  house,  he  found  the  bundles  made 
up,  ready  for  the  journey.  The  purchaser  was  waiting  with 
the  money.  The  notary  had  just  made  out  the  receipt.  Out 
in  the  yard,  in  front  of  the  house,  stood  a  country  cart  ready 
to  take  the  old  people  and  the  money  and  Jean-Frangois' 
mother.  The  rest  of  the  family  meant  to  set  out  on  foot  that 
night. 

The  young  Abbe  entered  the  room  on  the  ground  floor 
where  the  whole  family  were  assembled,  just  as  the  cure  of 
Montegnac  had  exhausted  all  his  eloquence.  The  two  old 
people  seemed  to  have  ceased  to  feel  from  excess  of  grief ;  they 
were  crouching  on  their  bundles  in  a  corner  of  the  room, 
gazing  round  them  at  the  old  house,  which  had  been  a  family 
possession  from  father  to  son,  at  the  familiar  furniture,  at 
the  man  who  had  bought  it  all,  and  then  at  each  other,  as 
who  should  say,  "Who  would  have  thought  that  we  should 
ever  have  come  to  this?"  For  a  long  time  past  the  old 
people  had  resigned  their  authority  to  their  son,  the  pris- 
oner's father;  and  now,  like  old  kings  after  their  abdication, 
they  played  the  passive  part  of  subjects  and  children. 
Tascheron  stood  upright  listening  to  the  cure,  to  whom  he 
gave  answers  in  a  deep  voice  by  monosyllables.  He  was  a 
man  of  forty-eight  or  thereabouts,  with  a  fine  face,  such  as 
served  Titian  for  his  apostles.  It  was  a  trustworthy  face, 
gravely  honest  and  thoughtful;  a  severe  profile,  a  nose  at 
right  angles  with  the  brows,  blue  eyes,  a  noble  forehead,  regu- 
lar features,  dark  crisped  stubborn  hair,  growing  in  the  sym- 
metrical fashion  which  adds  a  charm  to  a  visage  bronzed  by 
a  life  of  work  in  the  open  air — this  was  the  present  head  of 
the  house.  It  was  easy  to  see  that  the  cure's  arguments  were 
shattered  against  that  resolute  will. 

Denise  was  leaning  against  the  bread  hutch,  watching  the 
notary,  who  used  it  as  a  writing-table;  they  had  given  him 
the  grandmother's  armchair.  The  man  who  had  bought  the 
place  sat  beside  the  scrivener.  The  two  married  sisters  were 
laying  the  cloth  for  the  last  meal  which  the  old  folk  would 
offer  or  partake  of  in  the  old  house  and  in  their  own  country 


100  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

before  they  set  out  to  live  beneath  alien  skies.  The  men  of 
the  family  half  stood,  half  sat,  propped  against  the  large 
bedstead  with  the  green  serge  curtains,  while  Tascheron's 
wife,  their  mother,  was  whisking  an  omelette  by  the  fire. 
The  grandchildren  crowded  about  the  doorway,  and  the  pur- 
chaser's family  were  outside. 

Out  of  the  window  you  could  see  the  garden,  carefully  cul- 
tivated, stocked  with  fruit-trees;  the  two  old  people  had 
planted  them — every  one.  Everything  about  them,  like  the 
old  smoke-begrimed  room  with  its  black  rafters,  seemed  to 
share  in  the  pent-up  sorrow,  which  could  be  read  in  so  many 
different  expressions  on  the  different  faces.  The  meal  was 
being  prepared  for  the  notary,  the  purchaser,  the  children, 
and  the  men ;  neither  the  father,  nor  mother,  nor  Denise,  nor 
her  sisters,  cared  to  satisfy  their  hunger,  their  hearts  were 
too  heavily  oppressed.  There  was  a  lofty  and  heart-rending 
resignation  in  this  last  performance  of  the  duties  of  country 
hospitality — the  Tascherons,  men  of  an  ancient  stock,  ended 
as  people  usually  begin,  by  doing  the  honors  of  their  house. 

The  Bishop's  secretary  was  impressed  by  the  scene,  so 
simple  and  natural,  yet  so  solemn,  which  met  his  eyes  as  he 
came  to  summon  the  cure  of  Montegnac  to  do  the  Bishop's 
bidding. 

"The  good  man's  son  is  still  alive,"  Gabriel  said,  addressing 
the  cure. 

At  the  words,  which  every  one  heard  in  the  prevailing 
silence,  the  two  old  people  sprang  to  their  feet  as  if  the 
Trumpet  had  sounded  for  the  Last  Judgment.  The  mother 
dropped  her  frying-pan  into  the  fire.  A  cry  of  joy  broke  from 
Denise.  All  the  others  seemed  to  be  turned  to  stone  in  their 
dull  amazement. 

"Jean-Francois  is  pardoned!"  The  cry  came  at  that  mo- 
ment as  from  one  voice  from  the  whole  village,  who  rushed  up 
to  the  Tascherons'  house.  "It  is  his  lordship  the  Bishop " 

"I  was  sure  of  his  innocence !"  exclaimed  the  mother. 

"The  purchase  holds  good  all  the  same,  doesn't  it?"  asked 
the  buyer,  and  the  notary  answered  him  by  a  nod. 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  101 

In  a  moment  the  Abbe  Gabriel  became  the  point  of  interest, 
all  eyes  were  fixed  on  him;  his  face  was  so  sad,  that  it  was 
suspected  that  there  was  some  mistake,  but  he  could  not  bear 
to  correct  it,  and  went  out  with  the  cure.  Outside  the  house 
he  dismissed  the  crowd  by  telling  those  who  came  round  about 
him  that  there  was  no  pardon,  it  was  only  a  reprieve,  and  a 
dismayed  silence  at  once  succeeded  to  the  clamor.  Gabriel 
and  the  cure  turned  into  the  house  again,  and  saw  a  look 
of  anguish  on  all  the  faces — the  sudden  silence  in  the  village 
had  been  understood. 

"Jean-Frangois  has  not  received  his  pardon,  my  friends," 
said  the  young  Abbe,  seeing  that  the  blow  had  been  struck, 
"but  my  lord  Bishop's  anxiety  for  his  soul  is  so  great  that 
he  has  put  off  the  execution  that  your  son  may  not  perish  to 
all  eternity  at  least." 

"Then  is  he  living?"  cried  Denise. 

The  Abbe  took  the  cure  aside  and  told  him  of  his  parish- 
ioner's impiety,  of  the  consequent  peril  to  religion,  and  what 
it  was  that  the  Bishop  expected  of  the  cure  of  Montegnac. 

"My  lord  Bishop  requires  my  death,"  returned  the  cure. 
"Already  I  have  refused  to  go  to  this  unhappy  boy  when  his 
afflicted  family  asked  me.  The  meeting  and  the  scene  there 
afterwards  would  shatter  me  like  a  glass.  Let  every  man 
do  his  work.  The  weakness  of  my  system,  or  rather  the  over- 
sensitiveness  of  my  nervous  organization,  makes  it  out  of 
the  question  for  me  to  fulfil  these  duties  of  our  ministry.  I 
am  still  a  country  parson  that  I  may  serve  my  like,  in  a 
sphere  where  nothing  more  is  demanded  of  me  in  a  Christian 
life  than  I  can  accomplish.  I  thought  very  carefully  over 
this  matter,  and  tried  to  satisfy  these  good  Tascherons,  and 
to  do  my  duty  towards  this  poor  boy  of  theirs ;  but  at  the  bare 
thought  of  mounting  the  cart  with  him,  the  mere  idea  of 
b'eing  present  while  the  preparations  for  death  were  being 
made,  a  deadly  chill  runs  through  my  veins.  No  one  would 
ask  it  of  a  mother;  and  remember,  sir,  that  he  is  a  child  of 
my  poor  church 

"Then  you  refuse  to  obey  the  Bishop's  summons?"  asked 
the  Abbe  Gabriel. 


102  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

M.  Bonnet  looked  at  him. 

"His  lordship  does  not  know  the  state  of  my  health,"  ha 
said,  "nor  does  he  know  that  my  nature  rises  in  revolt 
against " 

"There  are  times  when,  like  Belzunce  at  Marseilles,  we  are 
bound  to  face  a  certain  death,"  the  Abbe  Gabriel  broke  in. 

Just  at  that  moment  the  cure  felt  that  a  hand  pulled  his 
cassock;  he  heard  sobs,  and,  turning,  saw  the  whole  family 
on  their  knees.  Old  and  young,  parents  and  children,  men 
and  women,  held  out  their  hands  to  him  imploringly;  all  the 
voices  united  in  one  cry  as  he  showed  his  flushed  face. 

"Ah !  save  his  soul  at  least !" 

It  was  the  old  grandmother  who  had  caught  at  the  skirt  of 
his  cassock,  and  was  bathing  it  with  tears. 

"I  will  obey,  sir "  No  sooner  were  the  words  uttered 

than  the  cure  was  forced  to  sit  down;  his  knees  trembled 
under  him.  The  young  secretary  explained  the  nature  of 
Jean-Francois'  frenzy. 

"Do  you  think  that  the  sight  of  his  younger  sister  might 
shake  him?"  he  added,  as  he  came  to  an  end. 

"Yes,  certainly,"  returned  the  cure. — "Denise,  you  will  go 
with  us." 

"So  shall  I,"  said  the  mother. 

"No !"  shouted  the  father.  "That  boy  is  dead  to  us.  You 
know  that.  Not  one  of  us  shall  see  him." 

"Do  not  stand  in  the  way  of  his  salvation,"  said  the  young 
Abbe.  "If  you  refuse  us  the  means  of  softening  him,  you 
take  the  responsibility  of  his  soul  upon  yourself.  In  his  pres- 
ent state  his  death  may  reflect  more  discredit  on  his  family 
than  his  life." 

"She  shall  go,"  said  the  father.  "She  always  interfered 
when  I  tried  to  correct  my  son,  and  this  shall  be  her  punish- 
ment." 

The  Abbe  Gabriel  and  M.  Bonnet  went  back  together  to 
the  parsonage.  It  was  arranged  that  Denise  and  her  mother 
should  be  there  at  the  time  when  the  two  ecclesiastics  should 
set  out  for  Limoges.  As  they  followed  the  footpath  along 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  103 

the  outskirts  of  Upper  Montegnac,  the  younger  man  had 
an  opportunity  of  looking  more  closely  than  heretofore  in  the 
church  at  this  country  parson,  so  highly  praised  by  the  vicar- 
general.  He  was  favorably  impressed  almost  at  once  by  his 
companion's  simple  dignified  manners,  by  the  magic  of  his 
voice,  and  by  the  words  he  spoke,  in  keeping  with  the  voice. 
The  cure  had  been  but  once  to  the  palace  since  the  Bishop 
had  taken  Gabriel  de  Eastignac  as  his  secretary,  so  that  he 
had  scarcely  seen  the  favorite  destined  to  be  a  Bishop  some 
day;  he  knew  that  the  secretary  had  great  influence,  and  yet 
in  the  dignified  kindness  of  his  manner  there  was  a  certain 
independence,  as  of  the  cure  whom  the  Church  permits  to 
be  in  some  sort  a  sovereign  in  his  own  parish. 

As  for  the  young  Abbe,  his  feelings  were  so  far  from  ap- 
pearing in  his  face  that  they  seemed  to  have  hardened  it  into 
severity;  his  expression  was  not  chilly,  it  was  glacial. 

A  man  who  could  change  the  disposition  and  manners  of 
a  whole  countryside  necessarily  possessed  some  faculty  of 
observation,  and  was  more  or  less  of  a  physiognomist;  and 
even  had  the  cure  been  wise  only  in  well-doing,  he  had  just 
given  proof  of  an  unusually  keen  sensibility.  The  coolness 
with  which  the  Bishop's  secretary  met  his  advances  and  re- 
sponded to  his  friendliness  struck  him  at  once.  He  could 
only  account  for  this  reception  by  some  secret  dissatisfaction 
on  the  other's  part,  and  looked  back  over  his  conduct,  wonder- 
ing how  he  could  have  given  offence,  and  in  what  the  offence 
lay.  There  was  a  short  embarrassing  silence,  broken  by  the 
Abbe  de  Rastignac. 

"You  have  a  very  poor  church,  Monsieur  le  Cure,"  he  re- 
marked, aristocratic  insolence  in  his  tones  and  words. 

"It  is  too  small,"  answered  M.  Bonnet.  "For  great  Church 
festivals  the  old  people  sit  on  benches  round  the  porch,  and 
the  younger  ones  stand  in  a  circle  in  the  square  down  below; 
but  they  are  so  silent,  that  those  outside  can  hear." 

Gabriel  was  silent  for  several  moments. 

"If  the  people  are  so  devout,  why  do  they  leave  the  church 
so  bare  ?"  he  asked  at  length. 


104  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

"Alas!  sir,  I  cannot  bring  myself  to  spend  money  on  the 
building  when  the  poor  need  it.  The  poor  are  the  Church. 
Besides,  I  should  not  fear  a  visitation  from  my  lord  Bishop  at 
the  Fete-Dieu!  Then  the  poor  give  the  church  such  things 
as  they  have !  Did  you  notice  the  nails  along  the  walls  ?  They 
fix  a  sort  of  wire  trellis-work  to  them,  which  the  women  cover 
with  bunches  of  flowers ;  the  whole  church  is  dressed  in  flow- 
ers, as  it  were,  which  keep  fresh  till  the  evening.  My  poor 
church,  which  looked  so  bare  to  you,  is  adorned  like  a  bride, 
and  fragrant  with  sweet  scents;  the  ground  is  strewn  with 
leaves,  and  a  path  in  the  midst  for  the  passage  of  the  Holy 
Sacrament  is  carpeted  with  rose  petals.  For  that  one  day  I 
need  not  fear  comparison  with  Saint  Peter's  at  Rome.  The 
Holy  Father  has  his  gold,  and  I  my  flowers;  to  each  his 
miracle.  Ah !  the  township  of  Montegnac  is  poor,  but  it  is 
Catholic.  Once  upon  a  time  they  used  to  rob  travelers,  now 
any  one  who  passes  through  the  place  might  drop  a  bag  full 
of  money  here,  and  he  would  find  it  when  he  returned  home." 

"Such  a  result  speaks  strongly  in  your  praise,"  said  Ga- 
briel. 

"I  have  had  nothing  to  do  with  it,"  answered  the  cure, 
flushing  at  this  incisive  epigram.  "It  has  been  brought  about 
by  the  Word  of  God  and  the  sacramental  bread." 

"Bread  somewhat  brown,"  said  the  Abbe  Gabriel,  smiling. 

"White  bread  is  only  suited  to  the  rich,"  said  the  cure 
humbly. 

The  Abbe  took  both  M.  Bonnet's  hands  in  his,  and  grasped 
them  cordially. 

"Pardon  me,  Monsieur  le  Cure,"  he  said ;  and  in  a  moment 
the  reconciliation  was  completed  by  a  look  in  the  beautiful 
blue  eyes  that  went  to  the  depths  of  the  cure's  soul. 

"My  lord  Bishop  recommended  me  to  put  your  patience 
and  humility  to  the  proof,  but  I  can  go  no  further.  After 
this  little  while  I  see  how  greatly  you  have  been  wronged 
by  the  praises  of  the  Liberal  party." 

Breakfast  was  ready.  Ursule  had  spread  the  white  cloth, 
and  set  new-laid  eggs,  butter,  honey  and  fruit,  cream  and 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  105 

coffee,  among  bunches  of  flowers  on  the  old-fashioned  table 
in  the  old-fashioned  sitting-room.  The  window  that  looked 
out  upon  the  terrace  stood  open,  framed  about  with  green 
leaves.  Clematis  grew  about  the  ledge — white  starry  blos- 
soms, with  tiny  sheaves  of  golden  crinkled  stamens  at  their 
hearts  to  relieve  the  white.  Jessamine  climbed  up  on  one 
side  of  the  window,  and  nasturtiums  on  the  other;  above  it, 
a  trail  of  vine,  turning  red  even  now,  made  a  rich  setting, 
which  no  sculptor  could  hope  to  render,  so  full  of  grace  was 
that  lace-work  of  leaves  outlined  against  the  sky. 

"You  will  find  life  here  reduced  to  its  simplest  terms,"  said 
the  cure,  smiling,  though  his  face  did  not  belie  the  sadness 
of  his  heart.  "If  we  had  known  that  you  were  coming — 
and  who  could  have  foreseen  the  events  which  have  brought 
you  here? — TJrsule  would  have  had  some  trout  for  you  from 
the  torrent;  there  is  a  trout-stream  in  the  forest,  and  the  fish 
are  excellent;  but  I  am  forgetting  that  this  is  August,  and 
that  the  Gabou  will  be  dry !  My  head  is  very  much  con- 
fused  " 

"Are  you  very  fond  of  this  place  ?"  asked  the  Abbe. 

"Yes.  If  God  permits,  I  shall  die  cure  of  Montegnac.  I 
could  wish  that  other  and  distinguished  men,  who  have 
thought  to  do  better  by  becoming  lay  philanthropists,  had 
taken  this  way  of  mine.  Modern  philanthropy  is  the  bane 
of  society;  the  principles  of  the  Catholic  religion  are  the 
one  remedy  for  the  evils  which  leaven  the  body  social.  In- 
stead of  describing  the  disease  and  making  it  worse  by 
jeremiads,  each  one  should  have  put  his  hand  to  the  plough 
and  entered  God's  vineyard  as  a  simple  laborer.  My  task  is 
far  from  being  ended  here,  sir ;  it  is  not  enough  to  have  raised 
the  moral  standard  of  the  people,  who  lived  in  a  frightful 
state  of  irreligion  when  I  first  came  here;  I  would  fain  die 
among  a  generation  fully  convinced." 

"You  have  only  done  your  duty,"  the  younger  man  re- 
torted drily ;  he  felt  a  pang  of  jealousy  in  his  heart. 

The  other  gave  him  a  keen  glance. 

"Is  this  yet  another  test?"  he  seemed  to  say — but  aloud 


106  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

he  answered  humbly,  "Yes. — I  wish  every  hour  of  my  life," 
he  added,  "that  every  one  in  the  kingdom  would  do  his  duty." 

The  deep  underlying  significance  of  those  words  was  still 
further  increased  by  the  tone  in  which  they  were  spoken. 
It  was  clear  that  here,  in  this  year  1829,  was  a  priest  of 
great  intellectual  power,  great  likewise  in  the  simplicity  of 
his  life;  who,  though  he  did  not  set  up  his  own  judgment 
against  that  of  his  superiors,  saw  none  the  less  clearly 
whither  the  Church  and  the  Monarchy  were  going. 

When  the  mother  and  daughter  had  come,  the  Abbe  left  the 
parsonage  and  went  down  to  see  if  the  horses  had  been  put  in. 
He  was  very  impatient  to  return  to  Limoges.  A  few  minutes 
later  he  returned  to  say  that  all  was  in  readiness  for  their 
departure,  and  the  four  set  out  on  their  journey.  Every 
creature  in  Montegnac  stood  in  the  road  about  the  post-house 
to  see  them  go.  The  condemned  man's  mother  and  sister 
said  not  a  word;  and  as  for  the  two  ecclesiastics,  there  were 
so  many  topics  to  be  avoided  that  conversation  was  difficult, 
and  they  could  neither  appear  indifferent  nor  try  to  take  a 
cheerful  tone.  Still  endeavoring  to  discover  some  neutral 
ground  for  their  talk  as  they  traveled  on,  the  influences  of 
the  great  plain  seemed  to  prolong  the  melancholy  silence. 

"What  made  you  accept  the  position  of  an  ecclesiastic?" 
Gabriel  asked  at  last  out  of  idle  curiosity,  as  the  carriage 
tnrned  into  the  highroad. 

"I  have  never  regarded  my  office  as  a  'position,' "  the  cure 
answered  simply.  "I  cannot  understand  how  any  one  can 
take  holy  orders  for  any  save  the  one  indefinable  and  all- 
powerful  reason — a  vocation.  I  know  that  not  a  few  have 
become  laborers  in  the  great  vineyard  with  hearts  worn  out  in 
the  service  of  the  passions ;  men  who  have  loved  without  hope, 
or  whose  hopes  have  been  disappointed ;  men  whose  lives  were 
blighted  when  they  laid  the  wife  or  the  woman  they,  loved  in 
the  grave ;  men  grown  weary  of  life  in  a  world  where  in  these 
times  nothing,  not  even  sentiments,  are  stable  and  secure, 
where  doubt  makes  sport  of  the  sweetest  certainties,  and  belief 
is  called  superstition. 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  107 

"Some  leave  political  life  in  times  when  to  be  in  power 
seems  to  be  a  sort  of  expiation,  when  those  who  are  governed 
look  on  obedience  as  an  unfortunate  necessity ;  and  very  many 
leave  a  battlefield  without  standards  where  powers,  by  nature 
opposed,  combine  to  defeat  and  dethone  the  right.  I  am  not 
supposing  that  any  man  can  give  himself  to  God  for  what 
he  may  gain.  There  are  some  who  appear  to  see  in  the  clergy 
a  means  of  regenerating  our  country;  but,  according  to  my 
dim  lights,  the  patriot  priest  is  a  contradiction  in  terms. 
The  priest  should  belong  to  God  alone. 

"I  had  no  wish  to  offer  to  our  Father,  who  yet  accepts  all 
things,  a  broken  heart  and  an  enfeebled  will ;  I  gave  myself  to 
Him  whole  and  entire.  It  was  a  touching  fancy  in  the  old 
pagan  religion  which  brought  the  victim  crowned  with  flow- 
ers to  the  temple  of  the  gods  for  sacrifice.  There  is  something 
in  that  custom  that  has  always  appealed  to  me.  A  sacrifice  is 
nothing  unless  it  is  made  graciously. — So  the  story  of  my  life 
is  very  simple,  there  is  not  the  least  touch  of  romance  in  it. 
Still,  if  you  would  like  to  hear  a  full  confession,  I  will  tell 
you  all  about  myself. 

"My  family  are  well-to-do  and  almost  wealthy.  My  father. 
a  self-made  man,  is  hard  and  inflexible;  he  deals  the  same 
measure  to  himself  as  to  his  wife  and  children.  I  have  never 
seen  the  faintest  smile  on  his  lips.  With  a  hand  of  iron,  a 
brow  of  bronze,  and  an  energetic  nature  at  once  sullen  and 
morose,  he  crushed  us  all — wife  and  children,  clerks  and  ser- 
vants, beneath  a  savage  tyranny.  I  think  (I  speak  for  myself 
alone)  that  I  could  have  borne  the  life  if  the  pressure  brought 
to  bear  on  us  had  been  even ;  but  he  was  crotchety  and  change- 
able, and  this  fitfulness  made  it  unbearable.  We  never  knew 
whether  we  had  done  right  or  wrong,  and  the  horrible  sus- 
pense in  which  we  lived  at  home  becomes  intolerable  in 
domestic  life.  It  is  pleasanter  to  be  out  in  the  streets  than 
in  the  house.  Even  as  it  was,  if  I  had  been  alone  at  home, 
I  could  have  borne  all  this  without  a  murmur;  but  there  was 
my  mother,  whom  I  loved  passionately ;  the  sight  of  her  misery 
and  the  continual  bitterness  of  her  life  broke  my  heart;  and 


108  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

if,  as  sometimes  happened,  I  surprised  her  in  tears,  I  was 
beside  myself  with  rage.  I  was  sent  to  school;  and  those 
years,  usually  a  time  of  hardship  and  drudgery,  were  a  sort 
of  golden  age  for  me.  I  dreaded  the  holidays.  My  mother 
herself  was  glad  to  come  to  see  me  at  the  school. 

"When  I  had  finished  my  humanities,  I  went  home  and 
entered  my  father's  office,  but  I  could  only  stay  there  a  few 
months ;  youth  was  strong  in  me,  my  mind  might  have  given 
way. 

"One  dreary  autumn  evening  my  mother  and  I  took  a  walk 
by  ourselves  along  the  Boulevard  Bourdon,  then  one  of  the 
most  depressing  spots  in  Paris,  and  there  I  opened  my  heart 
to  her.  I  said  that  I  saw  no  possible  life  for  me  save  in  the 
Church.  So  long  as  my  father  lived  I  was  bound  to  be 
thwarted  in  my  tastes,  my  ideas,  even  in  my  affections.  If  I 
adopted  the  priest's  cassock,  he  would  be  compelled  to  respect 
me,  and  in  this  way  I  might  become  a  tower  of  strength 
to  the  family  should  occasion  call  for  it.  My  mother  cried 
bitterly.  At  that  very  time  my  older  brother  had  enlisted 
as  a  common  soldier,  driven  out  of  the  house  by  the  causes 
which  had  decided  my  vocation.  (He  became  a  general  after- 
wards, and  fell  in  the  battle  of  Leipsic.)  I  pointed  out  to 
my  mother  as  a  way  of  salvation  for  her  that  she  should  marry 
my  sister  (as  soon  as  she  should  be  old  enough  to  settle  in 
life)  to  a  man  with  plenty  of  character,  and  look  to  this  new 
family  for  support. 

"So  in  1807,  under  the  pretext  of  escaping  the  conscription 
without  expense  to  my  father,  and  at  the  same  time  declaring 
my  vocation,  I  entered  the  Seminary  of  Saint-Sulpice  at  the 
age  of  nineteen.  Within  those  famous  old  walls  I  found 
happiness  and  peace,  troubled  only  by  thoughts  of  what  my 
mother  and  sister  must  be  enduring.  Things  had  doubtless 
grown  worse  and  worse  at  home,  for  when  they  came  to  see 
me  they  upheld  me  in  my  determination.  Initiated,  it  may 
be,  by  my  own  pain  into  the  secrets  of  charity,  as  the  great 
Apostle  has  defined  it  in  his  sublime  epistle,  I  longed  to  bind 
the  wounds  of  the  poor  and  suffering  in  some  out-of-the-way 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  109 

spot;  and  thereafter  to  prove,  if  God  deigned  to  bless  my  ef- 
forts, that  the  Catholic  religion,  as  put  in  practice  by  man, 
is  the  one  true,  good,  and  noble  civilizing  agent  on  earth. 

"During  those  last  days  of  my  diaconate,  grace  doubtless 
enlightened  me.  Fully  and  freely  I  forgave  my  father,  for 
I  saw  that  through  him  I  had  found  my  real  vocation.  But 
my  mother — in  spite  of  a  long  and  tender  letter,  in  which  I 
explained  this,  and  showed  how  the  trace  of  the  finger  of 
God  was  visible  throughout — my  mother  shed  many  tears 
when  she  saw  my  hair  fall  under  the  scissors  of  the  Church; 
for  she  knew  how  many  joys  I  was  renouncing,  and  did  not 
know  the  hidden  glories  to  which  I  aspired.  Women  are  so 
tender-hearted.  When  at  last  I  was  God's,  I  felt  an  infinite 
peace.  All  the  cravings,  the  vanities,  and  cares  that  vex  so 
many  souls  fell  away  from  me.  I  thought  that  Heaven  would 
have  care  for  me  as  for  a  vessel  of  its  own.  I  went  forth 
into  a  world  from  which  all  fear  was  driven  out,  where  the 
future  was  sure,  where  everything  is  the  work  of  God — even 
the  silence.  This  quietness  of  soul  is  one  of  the  gifts  of 
grace.  My  mother  could  not  imagine  what  it  was  to  take 
a  church  for  a  bride ;  nevertheless,  when  she  saw  that  I  looked 
serene  and  happy,  she  was  happy.  After  my  ordination  I 
came  to  pay  a  visit  to  some  of  my  father's  relatives  in 
Limousin,  and  one  of  these  by  accident  spoke  of  the  state  of 
things  in  the  Montegnac  district.  With  a  sudden  illumina- 
tion like  lightning,  the  thought  flashed  through  my  inmost 
soul — 'Behold  thy  vine !'  And  I  came  here.  So,  as  you  see, 
sir,  my  story  is  quite  simple  and  uninteresting." 

As  he  spoke,  Limoges  appeared  in  the  rays  of  the  sunset, 
and  at  the  sight  the  two  women  could  not  keep  back  their 
tears. 

Meanwhile  the  young  man  whom  love  in  its  separate  guises 
had  come  to  find,  the  object  of  so  much  outspoken  curiosity, 
hypocritical  sympathy,  and  very  keen  anxiety,  was  lying  on 
his  prison  mattress  in  the  condemned  cell.  A  spy  at  the 
door  was  on  the  watch  for  any  words  that  might  escape  him 


110  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

waking  or  sleeping,  or  in  one  of  his  wild  fits  of  fury ;  so  bent 
was  justice  upon  coming  at  the  truth,  and  on  discovering 
Jean-Frangois'  accomplice  as  well  as  the  stolen  money,  by 
every  means  that  the  wit  of  man  could  devise. 

The  des  Vanneaulx  had  the  police  in  their  interest;  the 
police  spies  watched  through  the  absolute  silence.  Whenever 
the  man  told  off  for  this  duty  looked  through  the  hole  made 
for  the  purpose,  he  always  saw  the  prisoner  in  the  same  at- 
titude, bound  in  his  strait-waistcoat,  his  head  tied  up  by  a 
leather  strap  to  prevent  him  from  tearing  the  stuff  and  the 
thongs  with  his  teeth.  Jean-Frangois  lay  staring  at  the  ceiling 
with  a  fixed  desperate  gaze,  his  eyes  glowed,  and  seemed  as  if 
they  were  reddened  by  the  full-pulsed  tide  of  life  sent  surging 
through  him  by  terrible  thoughts.  It  was  as  if  an  antique 
statue  of  Prometheus  had  become  a  living  man,  with  the 
thought  of  some  lost  joy  gnawing  his  heart ;  so  when  the  sec- 
ond avocat  general  came  to  see  him,  the  visitor  could  not  help 
showing  his  surprise  at  a  character  so  dogged.  At  sight  of 
any  human  being  admitted  into  his  cell,  Jean-Frangois  flew 
into  a  rage  which  exceeded  everything  in  the  doctors'  ex- 
perience of  such  affections.  As  soon  as  he  heard  the  key  turn 
in  the  lock,  or  the  bolts  drawn  in  the  heavily  ironed  door,  a 
light  froth  came  to  his  lips. 

In  person,  Jean-Frangois  Tascheron,  twenty-five  years  of 
age,  was  short,  but  well  made.  His  hair  was  stiff  and  crisp, 
and  grew  rather  low  on  his  forehead,  signs  of  great  energy. 
The  clear,  brilliant,  yellow  eyes,  set  rather  too  close  together, 
gave  him  something  the  look  of  a  bird  of  prey.  His  face  was 
of  the  round  dark-skinned  type  common  in  central  France. 
One  of  his  characteristics  confirmed  Lavater's  assertion  that 
the  front  teeth  overlap  in  those  predestined  to  be  murderers; 
but  the  general  expression  of  his  face  spoke  of  honesty,  of  sim- 
ple warm-heartedness  of  disposition — it  would  have  been 
nothing  extraordinary  if  a  woman  had  loved  such  a  man  pas- 
sionately. The  lines  of  the  fresh  mouth,  with  its  dazzling 
white  teeth,  were  gracious;  there  was  that  peculiar  shade  in 
the  scarlet  of  the  lips  which  indicates  ferocity  held  in  check, 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  111 

and  frequently  a  temperament  which  thirsts  for  pleasure  and 
demands  free  scope  for  indulgence.  There  was  nothing  of  the 
workman's  coarseness  about  him.  To  the  women  who  watched 
his  trial  it  seemed  evident  that  it  was  a  woman  who  had 
brought  flexibility  and  softness  into  the  fibre  inured  to  toil, 
the  look  of  distinction  into  the  face  of  a  son  of  the  fields, 
and  grace  into  his  bearing.  Women  recognize  the  traces  of 
love  in  a  man,  and  men  are  quick  to  see  in  a  woman  whether 
(to  use  a  colloquial  phrase)  Love  has  passed  that  way. 

That  evening  Jean-Frangois  heard  the  sound  as  the  bolts 
were  withdrawn  and  the  key  was  thrust  into  the  lock;  he 
turned  his  head  quickly  with  the  terrible  smothered  growl 
with  which  his  fits  of  fury  began;  but  he  trembled  violently 
when  through  the  soft  dusk  he  made  out  the  forms  of  his 
mother  and  sister,  and  behind  the  two  dear  faces  another — 
the  cure  of  Montegnac. 

"So  this  is  what  those  barbarous  wretches  held  in  store  for 
me !"  he  said,  and  closed  his  eyes. 

Denise,  with  her  prison  experience,  was  suspicious  of  every 
least  thing  in  the  room;  the  spy  had  hidden  himself,  mean- 
ing, no  doubt,  to  return ;  she  fled  to  her  brother,  laid  her  tear- 
stained  face  against  his,  and  said  in  his  ear,  "Can  they  hear 
what  we  say?" 

"I  should  rather  think  they  can,  or  they  would  not  have 
sent  you  here,"  he  answered  aloud.  "I  have  asked  as  a  favor 
this  long  while  that  I  might  not  see  any  of  my  family." 

"What  a  way  they  have  treated  him !"  cried  the  mother, 
turning  to  the  cure.  "My  poor  boy !  my  poor  boy !  .  .  ." 
She  sank  down  on  the  foot  of  the  mattress,  and  hid  her  face 
in  the  priest's  cassock.  The  cure  stood  upright  beside  her. 
"I  cannot  bear  to  see  him  bound  and  tied  up  like  that  and 
put  into  that  sack  .  .  ." 

"If  Jean  will  promise  me  to  be  good,  to  make  no  attempt 
on  his  life,  and  to  behave  well  while  we  are  with  him,  I  will 
ask  for  leave  to  unbind  him;  but  I  shall  suffer  for  the 
slightest  infraction  of  his  promise." 

"I  have  such  a  craving  to  stretch  myself  out  and  move 


112  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

freely,  dear  M.  Bonnet,"  said  the  condemned  man,  his  eyes 
filling  with  tears,  "that  I  give  you  my  word  I  will  do  as  you 
wish." 

The  cure  went  out,  the  jailer  came,  and  the  strait-waistcoat 
was  taken  off. 

"You  are  not  going  to  kill  me  this  evening,  are  you  ?"  asked 
the  turnkey. 

Jean  made  no  answer. 

"Poor  brother !"  said  Denise,  bringing  out  a  basket  which 
had  been  strictly  searched,  "there  are  one  or  two  things  here 
that  you  are  fond  of;  here,  of  course,  they  grudge  you  every 
morsel  you  eat." 

She  brought  out  fruit  gathered  as  soon  as  she  knew  that 
she  might  see  her  brother  in  prison,  and  a  cake  which  her 
mother  had  put  aside  at  once.  This  thoughtfulness  of  theirs, 
which  recalled  old  memories,  his  sister's  voice  and  move- 
ments, the  presence  of  his  mother  and  the  cure, — all  com- 
bined to  bring  about  a  reaction  in  Jean.  He  burst  into 
tears. 

"Ah !  Denise,"  he  said,  "I  have  not  made  a  meal  these  six 
months  past;  I  have  eaten  because  hunger  drove  me  to  eat, 
that  is  all." 

Mother  and  daughter  went  out  and  returned,  and  came  and 
went.  The  housewifely  instinct  of  seeing  to  a  man's  comfort 
put  heart  into  them,  and  at  last  they  set  supper  before  their 
poor  darling.  The  people  of  the  prison  helped  them  in  this, 
having  received  orders  to  do  all  in  their  power  compatible 
with  the  safe  custody  of  the  condemned  man.  The  des  Van- 
neaulx,  with  unkindly  kindness,  had  done  their  part  towards 
securing  the  comfort  of  the  man  in  whose  power  their  heritage 
lay.  So  Jean  by  these  means  was  to  know  a  last  gleam  of 
family  happiness — happiness  overshadowed  by  the  sombre 
gloom  of  the  prison  and  death. 

"Was  my  appeal  rejected?"  he  asked  M.  Bonnet. 

"Yes,  my  boy.  There  is  nothing  left  to  you  now  but  to 
make  an  end  worthy  of  a  Christian.  This  life  of  ours  is  as 
nothing  compared  with  the  life  which  awaits  us;  you  must 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  113 

think  of  your  happiness  in  eternity.  Your  account  with  men 
is  settled  by  the  forfeit  of  your  life,  but  God  requires  more, 
a  life  is  too  small  a  thing  for  Him." 

"Forfeit  my  life?  .  .  .  Ah,  you  do  not  know  all  that 
I  must  leave  behind." 

Denise  looked  at  her  brother,  as  if  to  remind  him  that  pru- 
dence was  called  for  even  in  matters  of  religion. 

"Let  us  say  nothing  of  that/'  he  went  on,  eating  fruit  with 
on  eagerness  that  denoted  a  fierce  and  restless  fire  within. 
"When  must  I ?" 

"No !  no !  nothing  of  that  before  me !"  cried  the  mother. 

"I  should  be  easier  if  I  knew,"  he  said  in  a  low  voice,  turn- 
ing to  the  cure. 

"The  same  as  ever !"  exclaimed  M.  Bonnet,  and  he  bent 
to  say  in  Jean's  ear — "If  you  make  your  peace  with  God  to- 
night, and  your  repentance  permits  me  to  give  you  absolution, 
it  shall  be  to-morrow." — Aloud  he  added,  "We  have  already 
gained  something  by  calming  you." 

At  these  last  words,  Jean  grew  white  to  the  lips,  his  eyes 
contracted  with  a  heavy  scowl,  his  features  quivered  with  the 
coming  storm  of  rage. 

"What,  am  I  calm?"  he  asked  himself.  Luckily  his  eyes 
met  the  tearful  eyes  of  his  sister  Denise,  and  he  regained  the 
mastery  over  himself. 

"Ah,  well,"  he  said,  looking  at  the  cure,  "I  could  not  listen 
to  any  one  but  you.  They  knew  well  how  to  tame  me,"  and 
he  suddenly  dropped  his  head  on  his  mother's  shoulder. 

"Listen,  dear,"  his  mother  said,  weeping,  "our  dear  M. 
Bonnet  is  risking  his  own  life  by  undertaking  to  be  with  you 
on  the  way  to" — she  hesitated,  and  then  finished — "to  eternal 
life." 

And  she  lowered  Jean's  head  and  held  it  for  a  few  moments 
on  her  heart. 

"Will  he  go  with  me?"  asked  Jean,  looking  at  the  cure, 
who  took  it  upon  himself  to  bow  his  head. — "Very  well,  I  will 
listen  to  him.  I  will  do  everything  that  he  requires  of  me." 

"Promise  me  that  you  will,"  said  Denise,  "for  your  soul 


114  THE  COUN7TRY  PARSON 

must  be  saved;  that  is  what  we  are  all  thinking  of.  And 
then — would  you  have  it  said  in  Limoges  and  all  the  coun- 
try round  that  a  Tascheron  could  not  die  like  a  man  ?  After 
all,  just  think  that  all  that  you  lose  here  you  may  find  again  in 
heaven,  where  forgiven  souls  will  meet  again." 

This  preternatural  effort  parched  the  heroic  girl's  throat. 
Like  her  mother,  she  was  silent,  but  she  had  won  the  victory. 
The  criminal,  hitherto  frantic  that  justice  had  snatched  away 
his  cup  of  bliss,  was  thrilled  with  the  sublime  doctrine  of  the 
Catholic  Church,  expressed  so  artlessly  by  his  sister.  Every 
woman,  even  a  peasant  girl  like  Denise  Tascheron,  possesses 
at  need  this  tender  tact;  does  not  every  woman  love  to  think 
that  love  is  eternal?  Denise  had  touched  two  responsive 
chords.  Awakened  pride  roused  other  qualities  numbed  by 
such  utter  misery  and  stunned  by  despair.  Jean  took  his  sis- 
ter's hand  in  his  and  kissed  it,  and  held  her  to  his  heart  in 
a  manner  profoundly  significant;  tenderly,  but  in  a  mighty 
grasp. 

"There,"  he  said,  "everything  must  be  given  up!  That 
was  my  last  heart-throb,  my  last  thought — intrusted  to  you, 
Denise."  And  he  gave  her  such  a  look  as  a  man  gives  at 
some  solemn  moment,  when  he  strives  to  impress  his  whole 
soul  on  another  soul. 

A  whole  last  testament  lay  in  the  words  and  the  thoughts ; 
the  mother  and  sister,  the  cure  and  Jean,  understood  so  well 
that  these  were  mute  bequests  to  be  faithfully  executed  and 
loyally  demanded,  that  they  turned  away  their  faces  to  hide 
their  tears  and  the  thoughts  that  might  be  read  in  their  eyes. 
Those  few  words,  spoken  in  the  death  agony  of  passion,  were 
the  farewell  to  fatherhood  and  all  that  was  sweetest  on  earth 
— the  earnest  of  a  Catholic  renunciation  of  the  things  of 
earth.  The  cure,  awed  by  the  majesty  of  human  nature,  by 
all  its  greatness  even  in  sin,  measured  the  force  of  this  mys- 
terious passion  by  the  enormity  of  the  crime,  and  raised  his 
eyes  as  if  to  entreat  God's  mercy.  In  that  action  the  touch- 
ing consolation,  the  infinite  tenderness  of  the  Catholic  fnith 
was  revealed — a  religion  that  shows  itself  so  human,  so  lov- 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  115 

ing,  by  the  hand  stretched  down  to  teach  mankind  the  laws 
of  a  higher  world,  so  awful,  so  divine,  by  the  hand  held  out 
to  guide  him  to  heaven.  It  was  Denise  who  had  just  discov- 
ered to  the  cure,  in  this  mysterious  manner,  the  spot  where 
the  rock  would  yield  the  streams  of  repentance.  Suddenly 
Jean  uttered  a  blood-curdling  cry,  like  some  hyasna  caught  by 
the  hunters.  Memories  had  awakened. 

"No !  no !  no !"  he  cried,  falling  upon  his  knees.  "I  want 
to  live !  Mother,  take  my  place.  Change  clothes  with  me.  I 
could  escape !  Have  pity !  Have  pity !  Go  to  the  King  and 
tell  him  .  .  ." 

He  stopped  short,  a  horrible  sound  like  the  growl  of  a  wild 
beast  broke  from  him;  he  clutched  fiercely  at  the  cure's  cas- 
sock. 

"Go,"  M.  Bonnet  said  in  a  low  voice,  turning  to  the  two 
women,  who  were  quite  overcome  by  this  scene.  Jean  heard 
the  word,  and  lifted  his  head.  He  looked  up  at  his  mother 
and  sister,  and  kissed  their  feet. 

"Let  us  say  good-bye,"  he  said.  "Do  not  come  back  any 
more.  Leave  me  alone  with  M.  Bonnet;  and  do  not  be 
anxious  about  me  now,"  he  added,  as  he  clasped  his  mother 
and  sister  in  a  tight  embrace,  in  which  he  seemed  as  though 
he  would  fain  put  all  the  life  that  was  in  him. 

"How  can  any  one  go  through  all  this  and  live?"  asked 
Denise  as  they  reached  the  wicket. 

It  was  about  eight  o'clock  in  the  evening  when  they  sepa- 
rated. The  Abbe  de  Rastignac  was  waiting  at  the  gate  of  the 
prison,  and  asked  the  two  women  for  news. 

"He  will  make  his  peace  with  God,"  said  Denise.  "If  he 
has  not  repented  already,  repentance  is  near  at  hand." 

A  few  minutes  later  the  Bishop  learned  that  the  Church 
would  triumph  in  this  matter,  and  that  the  condemned  man 
would  go  to  his  execution  with  the  most  edifying  religious 
sentiments.  The  public  prosecutor  was  with  his  lordship, 
who  expressed  a  wish  to  see  the  cure.  It  was  midnight  before 
M.  Bonnet  came.  The  Abbe  Gabriel,  who  had  been  going  to 
and  fro  between  the  palace  and  the  prison,  considered  that 


116  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

the  Bishop's  carriage  ought  to  be  sent  for  him,  for  the  poor 
man  was  so  exhausted  that  he  could  scarcely  stand.  The 
thought  of  to-morrow's  horrible  journey,  the  anguish  of  soul 
which  he  had  witnessed,  the  full  and  entire  repentance  of 
this  member  of  his  flock,  who  broke  down  completely  at  last 
when  the  great  forecast  of  Eternity  was  put  before  him, — 
all  these  things  had  combined  to  wear  out  M.  Bonnet's 
strength,  for  with  his  nervous  temperament  and  electric 
swiftness  of  apprehension,  he  was  quick  to  feel  the  sorrows 
of  others  as  if  they  were  his  own. 

Souls  like  this  beautiful  soul  are  so  open  to  receive  the  im- 
pressions, the  sorrows,  passions,  and  sufferings  of  those  to- 
wards whom  they  are  drawn,  that  they  feel  the  pain  as  if  it 
were  in  very  truth  their  own,  and  this  in  a  manner  which  is 
torture;  for  their  clearer  eyes  can  measure  the  whole  extent 
of  the  misfortune  in  a  way  impossible  to  those  blinded  by  the 
egoism  of  love  or  paroxysms  of  grief.  In  this  respect  such 
a  confessor  as  M.  Bonnet  is  an  artist  who  feels,  instead  of 
an  artist  who  judges. 

In  the  drawing-room  at  the  palace,  where  the  two  vicars- 
general,  the  public  prosecutor,  and  M.  de  Granville,  and  the 
Abbe  de  Rastignac  were  waiting,  it  dawned  upon  M.  Bonnet 
that  he  was  expected  to  bring  news. 

"Monsieur  le  Cure,"  the  Bishop  began,  "have  you  obtained 
any  confessions  with  which  you  may  in  confidence  enlighten 
justice  without  failing  in  your  duty?" 

"Before  I  gave  absolution  to  that  poor  lost  child,  my  lord, 
I  was  not  content  that  his  repentance  should  be  as  full  and 
entire  as  the  Church  could  require;  I  still  further  insisted  on 
the  restitution  of  the  money." 

"I  came  here  to  the  palace  about  that  restitution,"  said 
the  public  prosecutor.  "Some  light  will  be  thrown  on  ob- 
scure points  in  the  case  by  the  way  in  which  it  is  made.  He 
certainly  has  accomplices " 

"With  the  interests  of  man's  justice  I  have  no  concern," 
the  cure  said.  "I  do  not  know  how  or  where  the  restitution 
will  be  made,  but  made  it  will  be.  When  my  lord  Bishop 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  117 

summoned  me  here  to  one  of  my  own  parishioners,  he  re- 
placed me  in  the  exact  conditions  which  give  a  cure  in  his 
own  parish  the  rights  which  a  bishop  exercises  in  his  diocese 
— ecclesiastical  obedience  and  discipline  apart." 

"Quite  right,"  said  the  Bishop.  "But  the  point  is  to  obtain 
a  voluntary  confession  before  justice  from  the  condemned 
man." 

"My  mission  was  simply  to  bring  a  soul  to  God/'  returned 
M.  Bonnet. 

M.  de  Grancour  shrugged  his  shoulders  slightly,  and  the 
Abbe  Dutheil  nodded  approval. 

"Tascheron,  no  doubt,  wants  to  screen  some  one  whom  a 
restitution  would  identify,"  said  the  public  prosecutor. 

"Monsieur,"  retorted  the  cure,  "I  know  absolutely  noth- 
ing which  might  either  confirm  or  contradict  your  conjecture ; 
and,  moreover,  the  secrets  of  the  confessional  are  inviolable." 

"So  the  restitution  will  be  made  ?"  asked  the  man  of  law. 

"Yes,  monsieur,"  answered  the  man  of  God. 

"That  is  enough  for  me,"  said  the  public  prosecutor.  He 
relied  upon  the  cleverness  of  the  police  to  find  and  follow 
up  any  clue,  as  if  passion  and  personal  interest  were  not 
keener  witted  than  any  detective. 

Two  days  later,  on  a  market  day,  Jean-Frangois  Tascheron 
went  to  his  death  in  a  manner  which  left  all  pious  and  politic 
souls  nothing  to  desire.  His  humility  and  piety  were  exem- 
plary; he  kissed  with  fervor  the  crucifix  which  M.  Bonnet 
held  out  to  him  with  trembling  hands.  The  unfortunate  man 
was  closely  scanned;  all  eyes  were  on  the  watch  to  see  the 
direction  his  glances  might  take;  would  he  look  up  at  one  of 
the  houses,  or  gaze  on  some  face  in  the  crowd?  His  discre- 
tion was  complete  and  inviolable.  He  met  his  death  like  a 
Christian,  penitent  and  forgiven. 

The  poor  cure  of  Montegnac  was  taken  away  unconscious 
from  the  foot  of  the  scaffold,  though  he  had  not  so  much  as 
set  eyes  on  the  fatal  machine. 


118  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

The  next  day  at  nightfall,  three  leagues  away  from 
Limoges,  out  on  the  highroad,  and  in  a  lonely  spot,  Denise 
Tascheron  suddenly  stopped.  Exhausted  though  she  was  with 
physical  weariness  and  sorrow,  she  begged  her  father  to  allow 
her  to  go  back  to  Limoges  with  Louis-Marie  Tascheron,  one 
of  her  brothers. 

"What  more  do  you  want  to  do  in  that  place?"  her  father 
asked  sharply,  raising  his  eyebrows,  and  frowning. 

"We  have  not  only  to  pay  the  lawyer,  father,"  she  said  in 
his  ear;  "there  is  something  else.  The  money  that  he  hid 
must  be  given  back." 

"That  is  only  right,"  said  the  rigorously  honest  man, 
fumbling  in  a  leather  purse  which  he  carried  about  him. 

"No,"  Denise  said  swiftly,  "he  is  your  son  no  longer;  and 
those  who  blessed,  not  those  who  cursed  him,  ought  to  pay 
the  lawyer's  fees." 

"We  will  wait  for  you  at  Havre,"  her  father  said. 

Denise  and  her  brother  crept  into  the  town  again  before  it 
was  day.  Though  the  police  learned  later  on  that  two  of 
the  Tascherons  had  come  back,  they  never  could  discover  their 
lodging.  It  was  near  four  o'clock  when  Denise  and  her 
brother  went  to  the  higher  end  of  the  town,  stealing  along 
close  to  the  walls.  The  poor  girl  dared  not  look  up,  lest  the 
eyes  which  should  meet  hers  had  seen  her  brother's  head  fall. 
First  of  all,  she  had  sought  out  M.  Bonnet,  and  he,  unwell 
though  he  was,  had  consented  to  act  as  Denise's  father  and 
guardian  for  the  time  being.  With  him  they  went  to  the 
barrister,  who  lived  in  the  Rue  de  la  Comedie. 

"Good-day,  poor  children,"  the  lawyer  began,  with  a 
bow  to  M.  Bonnet.  "How  can  I  be  of  use  to  you?  Perhaps 
you  want  me  to  make  application  for  your  brother's  body." 

"No,  sir,"  said  Denise,  her  tears  flowing  at  the  thought, 
which  had  not  occurred  to  her;  "I  have  come  to  pay  our  debt 
to  you,  in  so  far  as  money  can  repay  an  eternal  debt." 

"Sit  down  a  moment,"  said  the  lawyer,  seeing  that  Denise 
and  the  cure  were  both  standing.  Denise  turned  away  to 
draw  from  her  stays  two  notes  of  five  hundred  francs,  pinned 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  119 

to  her  shift.  Then  she  sat  down  and  handed  over  the  bills 
to  her  brother's  counsel.  The  cure  looked  at  the  lawyer  with 
a  light  in  his  eyes,  which  soon  filled  with  tears. 

"Keep  it,"  the  barrister  said;  "keep  the  money  yourself, 
my  poor  girl.  Eich  people  do  not  pay  for  a  lost  cause  in  this 
generous  way." 

"I  cannot  do  as  you  ask,  sir,  it  is  impossible,"  said  Denise. 

"Then  the  money  does  not  come  from  you?"  the  barrister 
asked  quickly. 

"Pardon  me,"  she  replied,  with  a  questioning  glance  at  M. 
Bonnet — would  God  be  angry  with  her  for  that  lie? 

The  cure  kept  his  eyes  lowered. 

"Very  well,"  said  the  barrister,  and,  keeping  one  of  the 
notes  in  his  hand,  he  gave  the  other  to  the  cure,  "then  I  will 
divide  it  with  the  poor.  And  now,  Denise,  this  is  certainly 
mine" — he  held  out  the  note  as  he  spoke — "will  you  give  me 
your  velvet  ribbon  and  gold  cross  in  exchange  for  it  ?  I  will 
hang  the  cross  above  my  chimney-piece  in  memory  of  the 
purest  and  kindest  girl's  heart  which  I  shall  ever  meet  with, 
I  doubt  not,  in  my  career." 

"There  is  no  need  to  buy  it,"  cried  Denise,  "I  will  give 
it  you,"  and  she  took  off  her  gilt  cross  and  handed  it  to  the 
lawyer. 

"Very  well,  sir,"  said  the  cure,  "I  accept  the  five  hundred 
francs  to  pay  the  expenses  of  exhuming  and  removing  the 
poor  boy's  body  to  the  churchyard  at  Montegnac.  Doubtless 
God  has  forgiven  him ;  Jean  will  rise  again  with  all  my  flock 
at  the  Last  Day,  when  the  just  and  the  penitent  sinner  will 
be  summoned  to  sit  at  the  Father's  right  hand." 

"So  be  it,"  said  the  barrister.  He  took  Denise's  hand  and 
drew  her  towards  him  to  put  a  kiss  on  her  forehead,  a  move- 
ment made  with  another  end  in  view. 

"My  child,"  he  said,  "nobody  at  Montegnac  has  such  a 
thing  as  a  five-hundred-franc  note;  they  are  rather  scarce  in 
Limoges;  people  don't  take  them  here  without  asking  some- 
thing for  changing  them.  So  this  money  has  been  given  to 
you  by  somebody;  you  are  not  going  to  tell  me  who  it  was, 


120  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

and  I  do  not  ask  you,  but  listen  to  this :  if  you  hive  anything 
left  to  do  here  which  has  any  reference  to  your  poor  brother, 
mind  how  you  set  about  it.  M.  Bonnet  and  you  and  your 
brother  will  all  three  of  you  be  watched  by  spies.  People 
know  that  your  family  have  gone  away.  If  anybody  recog- 
nizes you  here,  you  will  be  surrounded  before  you  suspect 
it." 

"Alas !"  she  said,  "I  have  nothing  left  to  do  here.'* 

"She  is  cautious,"  said  the  lawyer  to  himself,  as  he  went  to 
the  door  with  her.  "She  has  been  warned,  so  let  her  extricate 
herself." 

It  was  late  September,  but  the  days  were  as  hot  as  in  the 
summer.  The  Bishop  was  giving  a  dinner-party.  The  local 
authorities,  the  public  prosecutor,  and  the  first  avocat  general 
were  among  the  guests.  Discussions  were  started,  which  grew 
lively  in  the  course  of  the  evening,  and  it  was  very  late  be- 
fore they  broke  up.  Whist  and  backgammon,  that  game  be- 
loved of  bishops,  were  the  order  of  the  day.  .It  happened 
that  about  eleven  o'clock  the  public  prosecutor  stepped  out 
upon  the  upper  terrace,  and  from  the  corner  where  he  stood 
saw  a  light  on  the  island,  which  the  Abbe  Gabriel  and  the 
Bishop  had  already  fixed  upon  as  the  central  spot  and  clue 
to  the  inexplicable  tangle  about  Tascheron's  crime — on  Vero- 
nique's  Isle  of  France  in  fact.  There  was  no  apparent  reason 
why  anybody  should  kindle  a  fire  in  the  middle  of  the  Vienne 
at  that  time  of  night — then,  all  at  once,  the  idea  which  had 
struck  the  Bishop  and  his  secretary  flashed  upon  the  public 
prosecutor's  brain,  with  a  light  as  sudden  as  that  of  the  fire 
which  shot  up  out  of  the  distant  darkness. 

"What  a  set  of  great  fools  we  have  all  been !"  cried  he,  "but 
we  have  the  accomplices  now." 

He  went  up  to  the  drawing-room  again,  found  out  M.  de 
Granville,  and  said  a  word  or  two  in  his  ear;  then  both  of 
them  vanished.  But  the  Abbe  de  Rastignac,  courteously  at- 
tentive, watched  them  go  out.  paw  that  they  went  towards  the 
terrace,  and  noticed  too  that  fire  on  the  shore  of  the  island. 

"It  is  all  over  with  her,"  thought  he. 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  121 

The  messengers  of  justice  arrived  on  the  spot — too  late. 
Denise  and  Louis-Marie  (whom  his  brother  Jean  had  taught 
to  dive)  were  there,  it  is  true,  on  the  bank  of  the  Vienne  at 
a  place  pointed  out  by  Jean;  but  Louis-Marie  had  already 
dived  four  times,  and  each  time  had  brought  up  with  him 
twenty  thousand  francs  in  gold.  The  first  instalment  wag 
secured  in  a  bandana  with  the  four  corners  tied  up.  As  soon 
as  the  water  had  been  wrung  from  the  handkerchief,  it  was 
thrown  on  a  great  fire  of  dry  sticks,  kindled  beforehand.  A 
shawl  contained  the  second,  and  the  third  was  secured  in  a 
lawn  handkerchief.  Just  as  Denise  was  about  to  fling  the 
fourth  wrapper  into  the  fire,  the  police  came  up  accompanied 
by  a  commissary,  and  pounced  upon  a  very  important  clue, 
as  they  thought,  which  Denise  suffered  them  to  seize  without 
the  slightest  emotion.  It  was  a  man's  pocket-handkerchief, 
which  still  retained  some  stains  of  blood  in  spite  of  its  long 
immersion.  Questioned  forthwith  as  to  her  proceedings, 
Denise  said  that  she  had  brought  the  stolen  money  out  of 
the  river,  as  her  brother  bade  her.  To  the  commissary,  in- 
quiring why  she  had  burned  the  wrappings,  she  answered  that 
she  was  following  out  her  brother's  instructions.  Asked  what 
the  wrappings  were,  she  replied  boldly,  and  with  perfect 
truth,  "A  bandana  handkerchief,  a  lawn  handkerchief,  and  a 
shawl." 

The  handkerchief  which  had  just  been  seized  belonged  to 
her  brother. 

This  fishing  expedition  and  the  circumstances  accompany- 
ing it  made  plenty  of  talk  in  Limoges.  The  shawl  in  partic- 
ular confirmed  the  belief  that  there  was  a  love  affair  at  the 
bottom  of  Tascheron's  crime. 

"He  is  dead,  but  he  shields  her  still,"  commented  one  lady, 
when  she  heard  these  final  revelations,  so  cleverly  rendered 
useless. 

"Perhaps  there  is  some  married  man  in  Limoges  who  will 
find  that  he  is  a  bandana  short,  but  he  will  perforce  hold  his 
tongue,"  smiled  the  public  prosecutor. 

"Little  mistakes  in  one's  wardrobe  have  come  to  be  so  com- 


122  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

promising,  that  I  shall  set  about  verifying  mine  this  very 
evening,"  said  old  Mme.  Ferret,  smiling  too. 

"Whose  are  the  dainty  little  feet  that  left  the  footmarks, 
so  carefully  erased?"  asked  M.  de  Granville. 

"Pshaw !  perhaps  they  belong  to  some  ugly  woman,"  re- 
turned the  avocat  general. 

"She  has  paid  dear  for  her  slip,"  remarked  the  Abbe'  de 
Grancour. 

"Do  you  know  what  all  this  business  goes  to  prove?"  put 
in  the  avocat  general.  "It  just  shows  how  much  women  have 
lost  through  the  Revolution,  which  obliterated  social  distinc- 
tions. Such  a  passion  is  only  to  be  met  with  nowadays 
in  a  man  who  knows  that  there  is  an  enormous  distance  be- 
tween himself  and  the  woman  he  loves." 

"You  credit  love  with  many  vanities,"  returned  the  Abbe 
Dutheil. 

"What  does  Mme.  Graslin  think?"  asked  the  prefect. 

"What  would  you  have  her  think?  She  was  confined,  as 
she  told  me  she  would  be,  on  the  day  of  the  execution,  and 
has  seen  nobody  since;  she  is  dangerously  ill,"  said  M.  de 
Granville. 

Meanwhile,  in  another  room  in  Limoges,  an  almost  comic 
scene  was  taking  place.  The  des  Vanneaulx's  friends  were 
congratulating  them  upon  the  restitution  of  their  inher- 
itance. 

"Well,  well,"  said  Mme.  des  Vanneaulx,  "they  ought  to 
have  let  him  off,  poor  man.  It  was  love,  and  not  mercenary 
motives,  that  brought  him  to  it;  he  was  neither  vicious  nor 
wicked." 

"He  behaved  like  a  thorough  gentleman,"  said  the  Sieur 
des  Vanneaulx.  "//  /  knew  where,  his  family  was,  I  would 
do  something  for  them;  they  are  good  people,  those  Tas- 
cherons." 

When  Mme.  Graslin  was  well  enough  to  rise,  towards  the 
end  of  the  year  1829,  after  the  long  illness  which  followed 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  123 

her  confinement,  and  obliged  her  to  keep  her  hed  in  absolute 
solitude  and  quiet,  she  heard  her  husband  speak  of  a  rather 
considerable  piece  of  business  which  he  wanted  to  conclude. 
The  Navarreins  family  thought  of  selling  the  forest 
of  Montegnac  and  the  waste  lands  which  they  owned  in  the 
neighborhood.  Graslin  had  not  yet  put  into  execution  a 
clause  in  his  wife's  marriage  settlement,  which  required  that 
her  dowry  should  be  invested  in  land ;  he  had  preferred  to  put 
her  money  out  at  interest  through  the  bank,  and  already  had 
doubled  her  capital.  On  this,  Veronique  seemed  to  recollect 
the  name  of  Montegnac,  and  begged  her  husband  to  carry  out 
the  contract  by  purchasing  the  estate  for  her. 

M.  Graslin  wished  very  much  to  see  M.  Bonnet,  to  ask  for 
information  concerning  the  forest  and  lands  which  the  Due 
de  Navarreins  thought  of  selling.  The  Due  de  Navarreins, 
be  it  said,  foresaw  the  hideous  struggle  which  the  Prince  de 
Polignac  had  made  inevitable  between  the  Liberals  and  the 
Bourbon  dynasty;  and  augured  the  worst,  for  which  reasons 
he  was  one  of  the  boldest  opponents  of  the  Coup  d'Etat.  The 
Duke  had  sent  his  man  of  business  to  Limoges  with  instruc- 
tions to  sell,  if  a  bidder  could  be  found  for  so  large  a  sum  of 
money,  for  His  Grace  recollected  the  Revolution  of  1789  too 
well  not  to  profit  by  the  lessons  then  taught  to  the  aristocracy. 
It  was  this  man  of  business  who,  for  more  than  a  month, 
had  been  at  close  quarters  with  Graslin,  the  shrewdest  old 
fox  in  Limousin,  and  the  only  man  whom  common  report 
singled  out  as  being  able  to  pay  down  the  price  of  so  large 
an  estate  on  the  spot. 

At  a  word  sent  by  the  Abbe  Dutheil,  M.  Bonnet  hastened 
to  Limoges  and  the  Hotel  Graslin.  Veronique  would  have 
prayed  the  cure  to  dine  with  her ;  but  the  banker  only  allowed 
M.  Bonnet  to  go  up  to  his  wife's  room  after  he  had  kept  him 
a  full  hour  in  his  private  office,  and  obtained  information 
which  satisfied  him  so  well,  that  he  concluded  his  purchase 
out  of  hand,  and  the  forest  and  domain  of  Montegnac  became 
his  (Graslin's)  for  five  hundred  thousand  francs.  He 
acquiesced  in  his  wife's  wish,  stipulating  that  this  purchase 


124  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

and  any  outlay  relating  thereto  should  be  held  to  accomplish 
the  clause  in  her  marriage  contract  as  to  her  fortune.  Graslin 
did  this  the  more  willingly  because  the  piece  of  honesty  now 
cost  him  nothing. 

At  the  time  of  Graslin's  purchase  the  estate  consisted  of 
the  forest  of  Montegnac,  some  thirty  thousand  acres  in  ex- 
tent, but  too  inaccessible  to  bring  in  any  money,  the  ruined 
castle,  the  gardens,  and  some  five  thousand  acres  in  the  uncul- 
tivated plains  under  Montegnac.  Graslin  made  several  more 
purchases  at  once,  so  as  to  have  the  whole  of  the  first  peak 
of  the  Correzien  range  in  his  hands,  for  there  the  vast  forest 
of  Montegnac  came  to  an  end.  Since  the  taxes  had  been 
levied  upon  it,  the  Due  de  Navarreins  had  not  drawn  fifteen 
thousand  francs  a  year  from  the  manor,  formerly  one  of  the 
richest  tenures  in  the  kingdom.  The  lands  had  escaped  sale 
when  put  under  the  Convention,  partly  because  of  their  bar- 
renness, partly  because  it  was  a  recognized  fact  that  nothing 
could  be  made  of  them. 

When  the  cure  came  face  to  face  with  the  woman  of  whom 
he  had  heard,  a  woman  whose  cleverness  and  piety  were  well 
known,  he  started  in  spite  of  himself.  At  this  time  Veronique 
had  entered  upon  the  third  period  of  her  life,  a  period  in 
which  she  was  to  grow  greater  by  the  exercise  of  the  loftiest 
virtues,  and  become  a  totally  different  woman.  To  the  Ra- 
phael's Madonna,  hidden  beneath  the  veil  of  smallpox  scars,  a 
beautiful,  noble,  and  impassioned  woman  had  succeeded,  a 
woman  afterwards  laid  low  by  inward  sorrows,  from  which 
a  saint  emerged.  Her  complexion  had  taken  the  sallow  tint 
seen  in  the  austere  faces  of  Abbesses  of  ascetic  life.  A  yel- 
lowish hue  had  overspread  the  temples,  grown  less  imperious 
now.  The  lips  were  paler,  the  red  of  the  opening  pome^an- 
ate  flower  had  changed  into  the  paler  crimson  of  the  Bt  niral 
rose.  Between  the  nose  and  the  corners  of  the  eyes  sorrow  had 
worn  two  pearly  channels,  down  which  many  tears  had 
coursed  in  secret;  much  weeping  had  worn  away  the  traces 
of  smallpox.  It  was  impossible  not  to  fix  your  eyes  on  the 
spot  where  a  network  of  tiny  blue  veins  stood  out  swollen  and 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  125 

distended  with  the  full  pulses  that  throbbed  there,  as  if  they 
fed  the  source  of  many  tears.  The  faint  brownish  tinge  about 
the  eyes  alone  remained,  but  there  were  dark  circles  under 
them  now,  and  wrinkles  in  the  eyelids  which  told  of  terrible 
suffering.  The  lines  in  the  hollow  cheeks  bore  record  of  sol- 
emn thoughts.  The  chin,  too,  had  shrunk,  it  had  lost  its 
youthful  fulness  of  outline,  and  this  scarcely  to  the  advan- 
tage of  a  face  which  wore  an  expression  of  pitiless  austerity, 
confined  however  solely  to  Veronique  herself.  At  twenty- 
nine  years  of  age  her  hair,  one  of  her  greatest  beauties,  had 
faded  and  grown  scanty;  she  had  been  obliged  to  pull  out  a 
large  quantity  of  white  hair,  bleached  during  her  confinement. 
Her  thinness  was  shocking  to  see.  In  spite  of  the  doctor's 
orders,,  she  had  persisted  in  nursing  her  child  herself;  and 
the  doctor  was  not  disposed  to  let  people  forget  this  when  all 
his  evil  prognostications  were  so  thoroughly  fulfilled. 

"See  what  a  difference  a  single  confinement  has  made  in  a 
woman  !"  said  he.  "And  she  worships  that  child  of  hers ;  but 
I  have  always  noticed  that  the  more  a  child  costs  the  mother, 
the  dearer  it  is." 

All  that  remained  of  youth  in  Veronique's  face  lay  in  her 
eyes,  wan  though  they  were.  An  untamed  fire  flashed  from 
the  dark  blue  iris ;  all  the  life  that  had  deserted  the  cold  im- 
passive mask  of  a  face,  expressionless  now  save  for  the  chari- 
table look  which  it  wore  when  her  poorer  neighbors  were 
spoken  of,  seemed  to  have  taken  refuge  there.  So  the  cure's 
first  dismay  and  surprise  abated  somewhat  as  he  went  on  to 
explain  to  her  how  much  good  a  resident  landowner  might 
effect  in  Montegnac,  and  for  a  moment  Veronique's  face  grew 
beautiful,  lighted  up  by  this  unexpected  hope  which  began  to 
shine  in  upon  her. 

"I  will  go  there,"  she  said.  "It  shall  be  my  property.  I 
will  ask  M.  Graslin  to  put  some  funds  at  my  disposal,  and  I 
will  enter  into  your  charitable  work  with  all  my  might. 
Montegnac  shall  be  cultivated,  we  will  find  water  somewhere 
to  irrigate  the  waste  land  in  the  plain.  You  are  striking  the 
rock,  like  Moses,  and  tears  will  flow  from  it !" 


126  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

The  Cure  de  Montegnac  spoke  of  Mme.  Graslin  as  a  saint 
when  his  friends  in  Limoges  asked  him  about  her. 

The  very  day  after  the  purchase  was  completed,  Graslin 
sent  an  architect  to  Montegnac.  He  was  determined  to  re- 
store the  castle,  the  gardens,  terraces,  and  park,  to  reclaim 
the  forest  by  a  plantation,  putting  an  ostentatious  activity 
into  all  that  he  did. 

Two  years  later  a  great  misfortune  befell  Mme.  Graslin. 
Her  husband,  in  spite  of  his  prudence,  was  involved  in  the 
commercial  and  financial  disasters  of  1830.  The  thought  of 
bankruptcy,  or  of  losing  three  millions,  the  gains  of  a  life- 
time of  toil,  were  both  intolerable  to  him.  The  worry  and 
anxiety  aggravated  the  inflammatory  disease,  always  lurk- 
ing in  his  system,  the  result  of  impure  blood.  He  was  com- 
pelled to  take  to  his  bed.  In  Veronique  a  friendly  feeling 
towards  Graslin  had  developed  during  her  pregnancy,  and 
dealt  a  fatal  blow  to  the  hopes  of  her  admirer,  M.  de  Gran- 
ville.  By  careful  nursing  she  tried  to  save  her  husband's  life, 
but  only  succeeded  in  prolonging  a  suffering  existence  for 
a  few  months.  This  respite,  however,  was  very  useful  to 
Grossetete,  who,  foreseeing  the  end,  consulted  with  his  old 
comrade,  and  made  all  the  necessary  arrangements  for  a 
prompt  realization. 

In  April  1831  Graslin  died,  and  his  widow's  despairing 
grief  only  sobered  down  into  Christian  resignation.  From 
the  first  Veronique  had  wished  to  give  up  her  whole  fortune  to 
her  husband's  creditors;  but  M.  Graslin's  estate  proved  to  be 
more  than  sufficient.  It  -was  Grossetete  who  wound  up  his 
affairs,  and  two  months  after  the  settlement  Mme.  Graslin 
found  herself  the  mistress  of  the  domains  of  Montegnac  and 
six  hundred  and  sixty  thousand  francs,  all  her  own;  and  no 
blot  rested  on  her  son's  name.  No  one  had  lost  anything 
through  Graslin — not  even  his  wife ;  and  Francis  Graslin  had 
about  a 'hundred  thousand  francs. 

Then  M.  de  Granville,  who  had  reason  to  know  Veronique's 
nature  and  loftiness  of  soul,  came  forward  as  a  suitor;  but, 
to  the  amazement  of  all  Limoges,  Mme.  Graslin  refused  the 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  127 

newly-appointed  public  prosecutor,  on  the  ground  that  sec- 
ond marriages  'were  discountenanced  by  the  Church.  Grosse- 
tete,  a  man  of  unerring  forecast  and  sound  sense,  advised 
Veronique  to  invest  the  rest  of  M.  Graslin's  fortune  and  her 
own  in  the  Funds,  and  effected  this  for  her  himself  at  once,  in 
the  month  of  July,  when  the  three  per  cents  stood  at  fifty.  So 
Francis  had  an  income  of  six  thousand  livres,  and  his  mother 
about  forty  thousand.  Veronique  was  still  the  greatest  for- 
tune in  the  department. 

All  was  settled  at  last,  and  Mme.  Graslin  gave  out  that  she 
meant  to  leave  Limoges  to  live  nearer  to  M.  Bonnet.  Again 
she  sent  for  the  cure,  to  consult  him  about  his  work  at 
Montegnac,  in  which  she  was  determined  to  share;  but  he 
generously  tried  to  dissuade  her,  and  to  make  it  clear  to  her 
that  her  place  was  io.  society. 

"I  have  sprung  f^om  the  people,  and  I  mean  to  return  to 
them,"  said  she. 

The  cure's  great  love  for  his  own  village  resisted  the  more 
feebly  when  he  learned  that  Mme.  Graslin  had  arranged  to 
make  over  her  house  in  Limoges  to  M.  Grossetete.  Certain 
sums  were  due  to  the  banker,  and  he  took  the  house  at  its  full 
value  in  settlement. 

Mme.  Graslin  finally  left  Limoges 'towards  the  end  of  Au- 
gust 1831.  A  troop  of  friends  gathered  about  her,  and  went 
with  her  as  far  as  the  outskirts  of  the  town;  'some  of  them 
went  the  whole  first  stage  of  the  journey.  Veronique  traveled 
in  a  caleche  with  her  mother ;  the  Abbe  Dutheil,  recently  ap- 
pointed'to  a  bishopric,  sat  opposite  them  with  old  M.  Grosse- 
tete. As  they  went  through  the  Place  d'Aine,  Veronique's 
emotion  was  almost  uncontrollable;  her  face  contracted; 
every  muscle  quivered  with  the  pain;  she  snatched  up  her 
child,  'and  held  him  tightly  to  her  in  a  convulsive  grasp, 
while  La  Sauviat  tried  to  cover  her  emotion  by  following  her 
example — it  seemed  that  La  Sauviat  was  not  unprepared  for 
something  of  this  kind. 

Chance  so  ordered  it  that  Mme.  Graslin  caught  a  glimpse 


128  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

of  the  house  where  her  father  had  lived;  she  clutched  Mme. 
Sauviat's  hand,  great  tears  filled  her  eyes  and  rolled  down  her 
cheeks.  When  Limoges  was  fairly  left  behind,  she  turned 
and  took  a  last  farewell  glance;  and  all  her  friends  noticed 
a  certain  look  of  happiness  in  her  face.  When  the '  public 
prosecutor,  the  young  man  of  five-and-twenty  whom  she  had 
declined  to  marry,  came  up  and  kissed  her  hand  with  lively 
expressions  of  regret,  the  newly-made  Bishop  noticed  some- 
thing strange  in  Veronique's  eyes :  the  dark  pupils  dilated  till 
the  blue  became  a  thin  ring  about  them.  It  was  unmistak- 
able that  some  violent  revulsion  took  place  within  her. 

"Now  I  shall  never  see  him  again !"  she  said  in  her  mother's 
ear,  but  there  was  not  the  slightest  trace  of  feeling  in  the  im- 
passive old  face  a^  Mme.  Sauviat  received  that  confidence. 

Grossetete,  the  shrewd  old  banker,  sitting  opposite,  watch- 
ing the  women  with  keen  eyes,  had  not  discovered  that  Vero- 
nique  hated  this  man,  whom  for  that  matter  she  received  as 
a  visitor.  In  things  of  this  kind  a  churchman  is  far  clearer- 
sighted  than  other  men,  and  the  Bishop  surprised  Veronique 
by  a  glance  that  revealed  an  ecclesiastic's  perspicacity. 

"You  have  no  regret  in  leaving  Limoges  ?"  the  Bishop  said 
to  Mme.  Graslin. 

"You  are  leaving  the  town,"  she  replied.  "And  M.  Grosse- 
tete scarcely  ever  comes  among  us  now,"  she  added,  with  a 
smile  for  her  old  friend  as  he  said  good-bye. 

The  Bishop  went  the  whole  of  the  way  to  Montegnac  with 
Veronique. 

"I  ought  to  have  made  this  journey-  in  mourning,"  she  said 
in  her  mother's  ear  as  they  walked  up  the  hill  near  Saint- 
Leonard. 

The  old  woman  turned  her  crabbed,  wrinkled  face,  and 
laid  her  finger  on  her  lips;  then  she  pointed  to  the  Bishop, 
who  was  giving  the  child  a  terrible  scrutiny.  Her  mother's 
gesture  first,  and  yet  more  the  significant  expression  in  the 
Bishop's  eyes,  made  Mme.  Graslin  shudder.  The  light  died 
out  of  her  face  as  she  looked  out  across  the  wide  gray  stretch 
of  plain  before  Montegnac,  and  melancholy  overcame  her. 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  129 

All  at  once  she  saw  the  cure  coining  to  meet  her,  and  made 
him  take  a  seat  in  the  carriage. 

"This  is  your  domain/'  said  M.  Bonnet,  indicating  the 
level  waste. 


IV 

MADAME  GRASLIN  AT  MONTEGNAC 

IN  a  few  moments  the  township  of  Montegnac  came  in  sight ; 
the  hillside  and  the  conspicuous  new  buildings  upon  it  shone 
golden  in  the  light  of  the  sunset;  it  was  a  lovely  landscape 
like  an  oasis  in  the  desert,  with  a  picturesque  charm  of  its 
own,  due  to  the  contrast  with  its  setting.  Mme.  Graslin's 
eyes  began  to  fill  with  tears.  The  cure  pointed  out  a  broad 
white  track  like  a  scar  on  the  hillside. 

"That  is  what  my  parishioners  have  done  to  show  their 
gratitude  to  their  lady  of  the  manor,"  he  said.  "We  can  drive 
the  whole  way  to  the  chateau.  The  road  is  finished  now,  and 
has  not  cost  you  a  sou ;  we  shall  put  in  a  row  of  trees  beside 
it  in  two  months'  time.  My  lord  Bishop  can  imagine  how 
much  toil,  thought,  and  devotion  went  to  the  making  of  such 
a  change." 

"And  they  have  done  this  themselves !"  said  the  Bishop. 

"They  would  take  nothing  in  return,  my  lord.  The  poorest 
lent  a  hand,  for  they  all  knew  that  one  who  would  be  like  a 
mother  to  them  was  coming  to  live  among  us." 

There  was  a  crowd  at  the  foot  of  the  hill,  all  the  village 
was  there.  Guns  were  fired  off,  and  mortars  exploded,  and 
then  the  two  prettiest  girls  of  Montegnac,  in  white  dresses, 
came  to  offer  flowers  and  fruit  to  Mme.  Graslin. 

"That  I  should  be  welcomed  here  like  this !"  she  cried, 
clutching  M,  Bonnet's  hand  as  if  she  felt  that  she  was  fall- 
ing over  a  precipice. 

The  crowd  went  up  as  far  as  the  great  iron  gatewav, 
whence  Mme.  Graslin  could  see  her  chateau.  At  first  sight 


130  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

the  splendor  of  her  dwelling  was  a  shock  to  her.  Stone  for 
building  is  scarce  in  this  district,  for  the  native  granite  is 
hard  and  exceedingly  difficult  to  work;  so  Graslin's  architect 
had  used  brick  for  the  main  body  of  the  great  building,  there 
being  plenty  of  brick  earth  in  the  forest  of  Montegnac,  and 
wood  for  the  felling.  All  the  woodwork  and  stone  in  fact 
came  also  from  the  forest  and  the  quarries  in  it.  But  for 
these  economies,  Graslin  must  have  been  put  to  a  ruinous 
expense;  but  as  it  was,  the  principal  outlay  was  for  wages, 
carriage,  and  salaries,  and  the  money  circulating  in  the  town- 
ship had  put  new  life  into  it. 

At  a  first  glance  the  chateau  stood  up  a  huge  red  mass, 
scored  with  dark  lines  of  mortar,  and  outlined  with  gray,  for 
the  facings  and  quoins  and  the  string  courses  along  each 
story  were  of  granite,  each  block  being  cut  in  facets  diamond 
fashion.  The  surface  of  the  brick  walls  round  the  courtyard 
(a  sloping  oval  like  the  courtyard  of  Versailles)  was  broken 
by  slabs  of  granite  surrounded  by  bosses,  and  set  at  equal 
distances.  Shrubs  had  been  planted  under  the  walls,  with 
a  view  to  obtaining  the  contrasts  of  their  various  foliage.  Two 
handsome  iron  gateways  gave  access  on  the  one  hand  to  the 
terrace  which  overlooked  Montegnac,  and  on  the  other  to  a 
/arm  and  outbuildings.  The  great  gateway  at  the  summit 
of  the  new  road,  which  had  just  been  finished,  had  a  neat 
lodge  on  either  side,  built  in  the  style  of  the  sixteenth  cen» 
tury. 

The  fagade  of  the  chateau  fronted  the  courtyard  and  faced 
the  west.  It  consisted  of  three  towers,  the  central  towers  be- 
ing connected  with  the  one  on  either  side  of  it  by  two  wings. 
The  back  of  the  house  was  precisely  similar,  and  looked  over 
the  gardens  towards  the  east.  There  was  but  one  window  in 
each  tower  on  the  side  of  the  courtyard  and  gardens,  each 
wing  having  three.  The  centre  tower  was  built  something 
after  the  fashion  of  a  campanile,  the  corner-stones  were  ver- 
miculated,  and  here  some  delicate  sculptured  work  had  been 
sparingly  introduced.  Art  is  timid  in  the  provinces;  and 
though  in  1829  some  progress  had  been  made  in  architectural 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  131 

ornament  (thanks  to  certain  writers),  the  owners  of  houses 
shrank  at  that  time  from  an  expense  which  lack  of  competi- 
tion and  scarcity  of  craftsmen  rendered  somewhat  formi- 
dable. 

The  tower  at  either  end  (three  windows  in  depth)  was 
crowned  by  a  high-pitched  roof,  with  a  granite  balustrade  by 
way  of  decoration;  each  angle  of  the  pyramid  was  sharply 
cut  by  an  elegant  balcony  lined  with  lead,  and  surrounded  by 
cast-iron  railings,  and  an  elegantly  sculptured  window  oc- 
cupying each  side  of  the  roof.  All  the  door  and  window 
cornices  on  each  story  were  likewise  ornamented  with  carved 
work  copied  from  Genoese  palace  fronts.  The  three  side  win- 
dows of  the  southern  tower  looked  out  over  Montegnac,  the 
northern  gave  a  view  of  the  forest. 

From  the  eastern  windows  you  could  see  beyond  the  gar- 
dens that  part  of  Montegnac  where  the  Tascherons  had 
lived,  and  far  down  below  in  the  valley  the  road  which  led 
to  the  chief  town  in  the  arrondissement.  From  the  west 
front  which  gave  upon  the  courtyard,  you  saw  the  wide  map 
of  the  plain  stretching  away  on  the  Montegnac  side  to  the 
mountains  of  the  Correze,  and  elsewhere  to  the  circle  of  the 
horizon,  where  it  blended  with  the  sky. 

The  wings  were  low,  the  single  story  being  built  in  the 
mansard  roof,  in  the  old  French  style,  but  the  towers  at  either 
end  rose  a  story  higher.  The  central  tower  was  crowned  by 
a  sort  of  flattened  dome  like  the  Clock  Towers  of  the  Tui- 
leries  or  the  Louvre ;  the  single  room  in  the  turret  was  a  sort 
of  belvedere,  and  fitted  with  a  turret-clock.  Eidge  tiles  had 
been  used  for  economy's  sake;  the  massive  baulks  of  timber 
from  the  forest  readily  carried  the  enormous  weight  of  the 
roof. 

Graslin's  "folly,"  as  he  called  the  chateau,  had  brought 
five  hundred  thousand  francs  into  the  commune.  He  had 
planned  the  road  before  he  died,  and  the  commune  out  of 
gratitude  had  finished  it.  Montegnac  had  moreover  grown 
considerably.  Behind  the  stables  and  outbuildings,  on  the 
north  side  of  the  hill  where  it  slopes  gradually  down  into 


132  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

the  plain,  Graslin  had  begun  to  build  the  steadings  of  a 
farm  on  a  large  scale,  which  showed  that  he  had  meant  to 
turn  the  waste  land  in  the  plain  to  account.  The  plantations 
considered  indispensable  by  M.  Bonnet  were  still  proceeding 
under  the  direction  of  a  head  gardener  with  six  men,  who 
were  lodged  in  the  outbuildings. 

The  whole  ground  floor  of  the  chateau,  taken  up  by  sitting- 
rooms,  had  been  splendidly  furnished,  but  the  second-story 
was  rather  bare,  M.  Graslin's  death  having  suspended  the 
upholsterer's  operations. 

"Ah !  my  lord,"  said  Mme.  Graslin,  turning  to  the  Bishop, 
after  they  had  been  through  the  chateau,  "I  had  thought  to 
live  here  in  a  thatched  cottage.  Poor  M.  Graslin  committed 
many  follies " 

"And  you "  the  Bishop  added,  after  a  pause,  and  Mme. 

Graslin's  light  shudder  did  not  escape  him — "you  are  about 
to  do  charitable  deeds,  are  you  not?" 

She  went  to  her  mother,  who  held  little  Francis  by  the 
hand,  laid  her  hand  on  the  old  woman's  arm,  and  went  with 
the  two  as  far  as  the  long  terrace  which  rose  above  the 
church  and  the  parsonage ;  all  the  houses  in  the  village,  rising 
stepwise  up  the  hillside,  could  be  seen  at  once.  The  cure  took 
possession  of  M.  Dutheil,  and  began  to  point  out  the  various 
features  of  the  landscape;  but  the  eyes  of  both  ecclesiastics 
soon  turned  to  the  terrace,  where  Yeronique  and  her  mother 
stood  motionless  as  statues;  the  older  woman  took  out  a  hand- 
kerchief and  wiped  her  eyes,  her  daughter  leant  upon  the 
balustrade,  and  seemed  to  be  pointing  out  the  church  below. 

"What  is  the  matter,  madame?"  the  Cure  Bonnet  asked, 
turning  to  La  Sauviat. 

"Nothing,"  answered  Mme.  Graslin,  coming  towards  the 
two  priests  and  facing  them.  "I  did  not  know  that  the 
churchyard  would  be  right  under  my  eyes " 

"You  can  have  it  removed ;  the  law  is  on  your  side." 

"The  law!"  the  words  broke  from  her  like  a  cry  of  pain. 

Again  the  Bishop  looked  at  Veronique.  But  she — tired  of 
meeting  that  sombre  glance,  which  seemed  to  lay  bare  the 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  133 

soul  arid  discover  her  secret  in  its  depths,  a  secret  buried  in 
a  grave  in  that  churchyard — cried  out: 

"Very  well,  then — yes!" 

The  Bishop  laid  his  hand  over  his  eyes,  so  overwhelmed  by 
this,  that  for  some  moments  he  stood  lost  in  thought. 

"Hold  her  up,"  cried  the  old  mother ;  "she  is  turning  pale." 

"The  air  here  is  so  keen,  I  have  taken  a  chill,"  murmured 
Mme.  Graslin,  and  she  sank  fainting  as  the  two  ecclesiastics 
caught  her  in  their  arms.  They  carried  her  into  the  house, 
and  when  she  came  to  herself  again  she  saw  the  Bishop  and 
the  cure  kneeling  in  prayer  for  her. 

"May  the  angel  which  has  visited  you  ever  stay  beside 
you !"  the  Bishop  said,  as  he  gave  her  his  blessing.  "Adieu, 
my  daughter." 

Mme.  Graslin  burst  into  tears  at  the  words. 

"Is  she  really  saved  ?"  cried  the  old  mother. 

"In  this  world  and  in  the  next,"  the  Bishop  turned  to  an- 
swer, as  he  left  the  room. 

Mme.  Graslin  had  been  carried  by  her  mother's  orders  to 
a  room  on  the  first  floor  of  the  southern  tower;  the  windows 
looked  out  upon  the  churchyard  and  the  south  side  of 
Montegnac.  Here  she  chose  to  remain,  and  installed  herself 
there  as  best  she  could  with  her  maid  Aline,  and  little  Fran- 
cis. Mme.  Sauviat's  room  naturally  was  near  her  daughter's. 

It  was  some  days  before  Mme.  Graslin  recovered  from  the 
cruel  agitation  which  prostrated  her  on  the  day  of  her  ar- 
rival, and,  moreover,  her  mother  insisted  that  she  must  stay 
in  bed  in  the  morning.  In  the  evening,  however,  Veronique 
came  to  sit  on  a  bench  on  the  terrace,  and  looked  down  on 
the  church  and  parsonage  and  into  the  churchyard.  In  spite 
of  mute  opposition  on  Mme.  Sauviat's  part,  Veronique  con- 
tracted a  habit  of  always  sitting  in  the  same  place  and  giving 
way  to  melancholy  broodings ;  it  was  almost  a  mania. 

"Madame  is  dying,"  Aline  said  to  the  old  mother. 

At  last  the  two  women  spoke  to  the  cure";  and  he,  good 
man,  who  had  shrunk  from  intruding  himself  upon  Mme. 
Graslin,  came  assiduously  to  see  her  when  he  learned  that  she 


134  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

was  suffering  from  some  malady  of  the  soul,  carefully  timing 
his  visits  so  that  he  always  found  Veronique  and  the  child, 
both  in  mourning,  out 'on  the  terrace.  The  country  was  al- 
ready beginning  to  look  dreary  and  sombre  in  the  early  days 
of  October. 

When  Veronique  first  came  to  the  chateau,  M.  Bonnet  had 
seen  at  once  that  she  was  suffering  from  some  hidden  wound, 
but  he  thought  it  better  to  wait  until  his  future  penitent 
should  give  him  her  confidence.  One  evening,  however,  he 
saw  an  expression  in  Mme.  Graslin's  eyes  that  warned  him  to 
hesitate  no  longer — the  dull  apathy  of  a  mind  brooding  over 
the  thought  of  death.  He  set  himself  to  check  the  progress 
of  this  cruel  disease  of  the  mind. 

At  first  there  was  a  sort  of  struggle  between  them,  a  fence 
of  empty  words,  each  of  them  striving  to  disguise  their 
thoughts.  The  evening  was  chilly,  but  for  all  that,  Veronique 
sat  out  on  the  granite  bench  with  little  Francis  on  her  knee. 
She  could  not  see  the  churchyard,  for  Mme.  Sauviat,  leaning 
against  the.  parapet,  deliberately  shut  it  out  from  sight. 
Aline  stood  waiting  to  take  the  child  indoors.  It  was  the 
seventh  time  that  the  cure  had  found  Veronique  there  on  the 
terrace.  He  spoke: 

"I  used  to  think  that  you  were  merely  sad,  madame,  but," 
and  he  lowered  his  voice  and  spoke  in  her  ear,  "this  is  despair. 
Despair  is  neither  Christian  nor  Catholic." 

"Oh !"  she  exclaimed,  with  an  intent  glance  at  the  sky,  and 
a  bitter  smile  stole  over  her  lips,  "what  would  the  Church 
leave  to  a  damned  soul,  if  not  despair?" 

Her  words  revealed  to  the  cure  how  far  this  soul  had  been 
laid  waste. 

"Ah !  you  are  making  for  yourself  a  hell  out  of  this  hill- 
side, when  it  should  rather  be  a  Calvary  whence  your  soul 
might  lift  itself  up  towards  Heaven." 

"I  am  too  humble  now,"  she  said,  "to  put  myself  on  such 
a  pedestal,"  and  her  tone  was  a  revelation  of  the  depth  of  her 
self-scorn. 

Then  a  sudden  light  flashed  across  the  cur6 — one  of  the 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  135 

inspirations  which  come  so  often  and  so  naturally  to  noble 
and  pure  souls  who  live  with  God.  He  took  up  the  child  and 
kissed  him  on  the  forehead.  "Poor  little  one !"  he  said,  in 
a  fatherly  voice,  and  gave  the  child  to  the  nurse,  who  took 
him  away.  Mme.  Sauviat  looked  at  her  daughter,  and  saw 
how  powerfully  those  words  had  wrought  on  her,  for  Vero- 
nique's  eyes,  long  dry,,  were  wet  with  tears.  Then  she  too 
went,  with  a  sign  to  the  priest. 

"Will  you  take  a  walk  on  the  terrace  ?"  suggested  M.  Bon- 
net when  they  were  alone.  "You  are  in  my  charge;  I  am 
accountable  to  God  for  your  sick  soul,"  and  they  went  towards 
the  end  of  the  terrace  above  "Tascherons'." 

"Leave  me  to  recover  from  my  prostration,"  she  said. 

"Your  prostration  is  the  result  of  pernicious  broodings." 

"Yes,"  she  said,  with  the  naivete  of  pain,  too  sorely 
troubled  to  fence  any  longer. 

"I  see,"  he  answered;  "you  have  sunk  into  the  depths  of 
indifference.  If  physical  pain  passes  a  certain  point  it  ex- 
tinguishes modesty,  and  so  it  is  with  mental  anguish,  it 
reaches  a  degree  when  the  soul  grows  faint  within  us;  I 
know." 

Veronique  was  not  prepared  for  this  subtle  observation 
and  tender  pity  in  M.  Bonnet;  but  as  has  been  seen  already, 
the  quick  sympathies  of  a  heart  unjaded  by  emotion  of  its 
own  had  taught  him  to  detect  and  feel  the  pain  of  others 
among  his  flock  with  the  maternal  instinct  of  a  woman.  This 
apostolic  tenderness,  this  mens  divinior,  raises  the  priest  above 
his  fellow-men  and  makes  of  him  a  being  divine.  Mme. 
Graslin  had  not  as  yet  looked  deep  enough  into  the  cure's 
nature  to  discover  the  beauty  hidden  away  in  that  soul,  the 
source  of  its  grace  and  freshness  and  its  inner  life. 

"Ah !  monsieur  .  .  ."  she  began,  and  a  glance  and  a 
gesture,  such  a  gesture  and  glance  as  the  dying  give,  put  her 
secret  into  his  keeping. 

"I  understand  !"  he  answered.  "But  what  then  ?  What  is 
to  be  done  ?" 

Silently  they  went  along  the  terrace  towards  the  plain. 


136  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

To  the  bearer  of  good  tidings,  the  son  of  Christ,  the  solemn 
moment  seemed  propitious. 

"Suppose  that  you  stood  now  before  the  Throne  of  God," 
he  said,  and  his  voice  grew  low  and  mysterious,  "what  would 
you  say  to  Him  ?" 

Mme.  Graslin  stopped  short  as  if  thunderstruck;  a  light 
shudder  ran  through  her. 

"I  should  say  to  Him  as  Christ  said,  'My  Father,  Thou 
hast  forsaken  me !' "  she  answered  simply.  The  tones  of  her 
voice  brought  tears  to  the  cure's  eyes. 

"0  Magdalen,  those  are  the  very  words  I  was  waiting 
to  hear!"  he  exclaimed,  unable  to  refuse  his  admiration. 
"You  see,  you  appeal  to  God's  justice !  Listen,  madame,  Re- 
ligion is  the  rule  of  God  before  the  time.  The  Church  re- 
serves the  right  of  judgment  in  all  that  concerns  the  soul. 
Man's  justice  is  but  the  faint  image  of  God's  justice,  a  pale 
shadow  of  the  eternal  adapted  to  the  temporal  needs  of  so- 
ciety." 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

"You  are  not  judge  in  your  own  cause,  you  are  amenable 
to  God ;  you  have  no  right  to  condemn  nor  to  pardon  yourself. 
God  is  the  great  Eeviser  of  judgments,  my  daughter." 

"Ah !"  she  cried. 

"He  sees  to  the  origin  of  all  things,  while  we  only  see  the 
things  themselves." 

Again  Veronique  stopped.    These  ideas  were  new  to  her. 

"To  a  soul  as  lofty  as  }rours,"  he  went  on  courageously, 
"I  do  not  speak  as  to  my  poor  parishioners;  I  owe  it  to 
you  to  use  a  different  language.  You  who  have  so  cultivated 
your  mind  can  rise  to  the  knowledge  of  the  spirit  of  the 
Catholic  religion,  which  words  and  symbols  must  express  and 
make  visible  to  the  eyes  of  babes  and  the  poor.  Follow  what 
I  am  about  to  say  carefully,  for  it  refers  to  you ;  and  if  the 
point  of  view  which  I  take  for  the  moment  seems  wide,  it  is 
none  the  less  your  own  case  which  I  am  considering. 

"Justice,  devised  for  the  protection  of  society,  is  based 
upon  a  theory  of  the  equality  of  individuals.  Society,  which 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  137 

is  nothing  but  an  aggregation  of  facts,  is  based  on  inequality. 
So  there  is  a  fundamental  discrepancy  between  justice  and 
fact.  Should  the  law  exercise  a  restraining  or  encouraging 
influence  on  the  progress  of  society  ?  In  other  words,  should 
the  law  oppose  itself  to  the  internal  tendency  of  society,  so  as 
to  maintain  things  as  they  are ;  or,  on  the  other  hand,  should 
the  law  be  more  flexible,  adapt  itself,  and  keep  pace  with  the 
tendency  so  as  to  guide  it?  No  maker  of  laws  since  men 
began  to  live  together  has  taken  it  upon  himself  to  decide 
that  problem.  All  legislators  have  been  cdntent  to  analyze 
facts,  to  indicate  those  which  seemed  to  them  to  be  blame- 
worthy or  criminal,  and  to  prescribe  punishments  or  rewards. 
Such  is  law  as  man  has  made  it.  It  is  powerless  to  prevent 
evil-doing;  powerless  no  less  to  prevent  offenders  who  have 
been  punished  from  offending  again. 

"Philanthropy  is  a  sublime  error.  Philanthropy  vainly 
applies  severe  discipline  to  the  body,  while  it  cannot  find  the 
balm  which  heals  the  soul.  Philanthropy  conceives  projects, 
sets  forth  theories,  and  leaves  mankind  to  carry  them  out  by 
means  of  silence,  work,  and  discipline — dumb  methods,  with 
no  virtue  in  them.  Eeligion  knows  nought  of  these  imperfec- 
tions; for  her,  life  extends  beyond  this  world;  for  Eeligion, 
we  are  all  of  us  fallen  creatures  in  a  state  of  degradation, 
and  it  is  this  very  view  of  mankind  which  opens  out  to  us 
an  inexhaustible  treasure  of  indulgence.  All  of  us  are  on 
the  way  to  our  complete  regeneration,  some  of  us  are  further 
advanced,  and  some  less,  but  none  of  us  are  infallible;  the 
Church  is  prepared  for  sins,  ay,  and  even  for  crimes.  In  a 
criminal,  society  sees  an  individual  to  be  cut  off  from  its 
midst,  but  the  Church  sees  in  him  a  soul  to  be  saved.  And 
more,  far  more !  .  .  .  Inspired  by  God,  whose  dealings 
with  man  She  watches  and  ponders,  the  Church  admits  our 
inequality  as  human  beings,  and  takes  the  disproportionate 
burden  into  account,  and  we  who  are  so  unequal  in  heart,  in 
body  or  mind,  in  courage  or  aptitude,  are  made  equal  by 
repentance.  In  this,  madame,  equality  is  no  empty  word; 
we  can  be,  and  are,  all  equal  through  our  sentiments. 


138  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

"One  idea  runs  through  all  religions,  from  the  uncouth 
fetichism  of  the  savage  to  the  graceful  imaginings  of  the 
Greek  and  the  profound  and  ingenious  doctrines  of  India  and 
Egypt,  an  idea  that  finds  expression  in  all  cults  joyous  or 
gloomy,  a  conviction  of  man's  fall  and  of  his  sin,  whence, 
everywhere,  the  idea  of  sacrifice  and  redemption. 

"The  death  of  the  Eedeemer  who  died  for  the  whole  human 
race  is  for  us  a  Symbol ;  this,  too,  we  must  do  for  ourselves ; 
we  must  redeem  our  errors ! — redeem  our  sins ! — redeem  our 
crimes  !  There  fe  no  sin  beyond  redemption — all  Catholicism 
lies  in  that.  It  is  the  wherefore  of  the  holy  sacraments  which 
assist  in  the  work  of  grace  and  sustain  the  repentant  sinner. 
And  though  one  should  weep,  madame,  and  sigh  like  the 
Magdalen  in  the  desert,  this  is  but  the  beginning — an  action 
is  the  end.  The  monasteries  wept,  but  acted  too;  they 
prayed,  but  they  civilized;  they  were  the  active  practical 
spreaders  of  our  divine  religion.  They  built,  and  planted, 
and  tilled  Europe ;  they  rescued  the  treasures  of  learning  for 
us;  to  them  we  owe  the  preservation  of  our  jurisprudence, 
our  traditions  of  statecraft  and  art.  The  sites  of  those 
centres  of  light  will  be  for  ever  remembered  in  Europe  with 
gratitude.  Most  modern  towns  sprang  up  about  a  monastery. 

"If  you  believe  that  God  is  to  judge  you,  the  Church, 
using  my  voice,  tells  you  that  there  is  no  sin  beyond  redemp- 
tion through  the  good  works  of  repentance.  The  evil  we  have 
wrought  is  weighed  against  the  good  that  we  have  done  by 
the  great  hands  of  God.  Be  yourself  a  monastery  here ;  it  is 
within  your  power  to  work  miracles  once  more.  For  you, 
work  must  be  prayer.  Your  work  should  be  to  diffuse  happi- 
ness among  those  above  whom  you  have  been  set  by  your  for- 
tune and  your  intellect,  and  in  all  ways,  even  by  your  natural 
position,  for  the  height  of  your  chateau  above  the  village  is 
a  visible  expression  of  your  social  position." 

They  were  turning  towards  the  plains  as  he  spoke,  so  that 
the  cure  could  point  out  the  village  on  the  lower  slopes  of 
the  hill  and  the  chateau  towering  above  it.  It  was  half-past 
four  in  the  afternoon.  A  shaft  of  yellow  sunlight  fell  across 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  139 

the  terrace  and  the  gardens;  it  lighted  up  the  chateau  and 
brought  out  the  pattern  of  the  gleaming  gilt  scroll-work  on 
the  corner  balconies  high  up  on  the  towers;  it  lit  the  plain 
which  stretched  into  the  distance  divided  by  the  road,  a  sober 
gray  ribbon  with  no  embroidery  of  trees  as  yet  to  outline  a 
waving  green  border  on  either  side.  Veronique  and  M.  Bon- 
net passed  the  end  of  the  chateau  and  came  into  the  court- 
yard, beyond  which  the  stables  and  farm  buildings  lay  in 
sight,  and  further  yet  the  forest  of  Montegnac;  the  sunlight 
slid  across  the  landscape  like  a  lingering  caress.  Even  when 
the  last  glow  of  the  sunset  had  faded  except  from  the  highest 
hills,  it  was  still  light  enough  in  the  plain  below  to  see  all  the 
chance  effects  of  color  in  the  splendid  tapestry  of  an  autumn 
forest  spread  between  Montegnac  and  the  first  peak  of  the 
chain  of  the  Correze.  The  oak-trees  stood  out  like  masses 
of  Florentine  bronze  among  the  verdigris  greens  of  the  wal- 
nuts and  chestnuts;  the  leaves  of  a  few  trees,  the  first  to 
change,  shone  like  gold  among  the  others;  and  all  these  dif- 
ferent shades  of  color  were  emphasized  by  the  gray  patches 
of  bare  earth.  The  trunks  of  leafless  trees  looked  like  pale 
columns;  and  every  tint,  red,  tawny,  and  gray,  picturesquely 
blended  in  the  pale  October  sunshine,  made  a  harmony  of 
color  with  the  fertile  lowland,  where  the  vast  fallows  were 
green  as  stagnant  water.  Not  a  tree  stirred,  not  a  bird — 
death  in  the  plain,,  silence  in  the  forest;  a  thought  in  the 
priest's  mind,  as  yet  unuttered,  was  to  be  the  sole  comment 
on  that  dumb  beauty.  A  streak  of  smoke  rose  here  and  there 
from  the  thatched  roofs  of  the  village.  The  chateau  seemed 
sombre  as  its  mistress'  mood,  for  there  is  a  mysterious  law 
of  uniformity,  in  virtue  of  which  the  house  takes  its  char- 
acter from  the  dominant  nature  within  it,  a  subtle  presence 
which  hovers  throughout.  The  sense  of  the  cure's  words 
had  reached  Mme.  Graslin's  brain;  they  had  gone  to  her 
heart  with  all  the  force  of  conviction;  the  angelic  resonance 
of  his  voice  had  stirred  her  tenderness;  she  stopped  suddenly 
short.  The  cure  stretched  his  arm  out  towards  the  forest; 
Veronique  looked  at  him. 


140  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

"Do  you  not  see  a  dim  resemblance  between  this  and  the 
life  of  humanity  ?  His  own  fate  for  each  of  us !  And  what 
unequal  lots  there  are  among  that  mass  of  trees.  Those  on 
the  highest  ground  have  poorer  soil  and  less  water;  they  are 
the  first  to  die " 

"And  some  are  cut  down  in  the  grace  of  their  youth  by 
some  woman  gathering  wood !"  she  said  bitterly. 

"Do  not  give  way  to  those  feelings  again,"  he  answered 
firmly,  but  with  indulgence  in  his  manner.  "The  forest 
has  not  been  cut  down,  and  that  has  been  its  ruin.  Do  you 
see  something  yonder  there  among  the  dense  forest?" 

V6ronique  could  scarcely  distinguish  between  the  usual 
and  unusual  in  a  forest,  but  she  obediently  looked  in  the 
required  direction,  and  then  timidly  at  the  cure. 

"Do  you  not  observe,"  he  said,  seeing  in  that  glance  that 
Veronique  did  not  understand,  "that  there  are  strips  where 
all  the  trees  of  every  kind  are  still  green?" 

"Oh,  so  there  are  !"  she  cried.    "How  is  it  ?" 

"In  those  strips  of  green  lies  a  fortune  for  Montegnac  and 
for  you — a  vast  fortune,  as  I  pointed  out  to  M.  Graslin.  You 
can  see  three  furrows;  those  are  three  valleys,  the  streams 
there  are  lost  in  the  torrent-bed  of  the  Gabou.  The  Gabon 
is  the  boundary  line  between  us  and  the  next  commune. 
All  through  September  and  October  it  is  dry,  but  when  No- 
vember comes  it  will  be  full.  All  that  water  runs  to  waste; 
but  it  would  be  easy  to  make  one  or  two  weirs  across  from 
side  to  side  of  the  valley  to  keep  back  the  water  (as  Riquet 
did  at  Saint-Ferreol,  where  there  are  huge  reservoirs  which 
supply  the  Languedoc  canal) ;  and  it  would  be  easy  to  increase 
the  volume  of  the  water  by  turning  several  little  streams 
in  the  forest  into  the  river.  Wisely  distributing  it  as  re- 
quired, by  means  of  sluices  and  irrigation  trenches,  the  whole 
plain  can  be  brought  into  cultivation,  and  the  overflow,  be- 
sides, could  be  turned  into  our  little  river. 

"You  will  have  fine  poplars  along  all  the  channels,  and  you 
will  raise  cattle  in  the  finest  possible  meadows.  What  is  grass 
but  water  and  sun  ?  You  could  grow  corn  in  the  plain,  there 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  141 

is  quite  enough  depth  of  earth;  with  so  many  trenches  there 
will  be  moisture  to  enrich  the  soil ;  the  poplar-trees  will  flour- 
ish along  the  channels  and  attract  the  rain  clouds,  and  the 
fields  will  absorb  the  principles  of  the  rain:  these  are  the 
secrets  of  the  luxuriant  greenness  of  the  valleys.  Some  day 
you  will  see  life  and  joy  and  stir  instead  of  this  prevailing 
silence  and  barren  dreariness.  Will  not  this  be  a  noble 
prayer?  Will  not  these  things  occupy  your  idleness  better 
than  melancholy  broodings?" 

Veronique  grasped  the  cure's  hand,  and  made  but  a  brief 
answer,  but  that  answer  was  grand: 

"It  shall  be  done,  monsieur." 

"You  have  a  conception  of  this  great  thing,"  he  began 
again,  "but  you  will  not  carry  it  out  yourself.  Neither  you 
nor  I  have  knowledge  enough  for  the  realization  of  a  thought 
which  might  occur  to  any  one,  but  that  raises  immense  prac- 
tical difficulties;  for  simple  and  almost  invisible  as  those 
difficulties  are,  they  call  for  the  most  accurate  skill  of 
science.  So  to-morrow  begin  your  search  for  the  human  in- 
struments which,  in  a  dozen  3rears'  time,  will  contrive  that  the 
six  thousand  acres  thus  brought  into  cultivation  shall  yield 
you  an  income  of  six  or  seven  thousand  louis  d'or.  The  un- 
dertaking will  make  Montegnac  one  of  the  richest  communes 
in  the  department  some  day.  The  forest  brings  in  nothing 
as  yet ;  but  sooner  or  later  buyers  will  come  here  for  the  splen- 
did timber,  treasures  slowly  accumulated  by  time,  the  only 
treasures  which  man  cannot  procure  save  by  patient  waiting, 
and  cannot  do  without.  Perhaps  some  day  (who  knows)  the 
Government  will  take  steps  to  open  up  ways  of  transporting 
timber  grown  here  to  its  dockyards;  but  the  Government 
will  wait  until  Montegnac  is  ten  times  its  present  size  before 
giving  its  fostering  aid;  for  the  Government,  like  Fortune, 
gives  only  to  those  who  have.  By  that  time  this  estate  will 
be  one  of  the  finest  in  France;  it  will  be  the  pride  of  your 
grandson,  who  may  possibly  find  the  chateau  too  small  in 
proportion  to  his  income." 

"That  is  a  future  for  me  to  live  for/'  said  Veronique. 


142  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

"Such  a  work  might  redeem  many  errors,"  said  the  cure. 

Seeing  that  he  was  understood,  he  endeavored  to  send  a 
last  shaft  home  by  way  of  her  intelligence;  he  had  divined 
that  in  the  woman  before  him  the  heart  could  only  be  reached 
through  the  brain;  whereas,  in  other  women,  the  way  to  the 
brain  lies  through  the  heart. 

"Do  you  know  what  a  great  mistake  you  are  making?"  he 
asked,  after  a  pause. 

She  looked  at  him  with  frightened  eyes. 

"Your  repentance  as  yet  is  only  the  consciousness  of  a 
defeat.  If  there  is  anything  fearful,  it  is  the  despair  of 
Satan;  and  perhaps  man's  repentance  was  like  this  before 
Jesus  Christ  came  on  earth.  But  for  us  Catholics,  repentance 
is  the  horror  which  seizes  on  a  soul  hurrying  on  its  downward 
course,  and  in  that  shock  God  reveals  Himself.  You  are  like 
a  Pagan  Orestes ;  become  a  Saint  Paul !" 

"Your  words  have  just  wrought  a  complete  change  in  me," 
she  cried.  "Now,  oh !  I  want  to  live !" 

"The  spirit  has  overcome,"  the  humble  priest  said  to  him- 
self, as  he  went  away,  glad  at  heart.  He  had  found  food  for 
the  secret  despair  which  was  gnawing  Mme.  Graslin,  by 
giving  to  her  repentance  the  form  of  a  good  and  noble  deed. 

The  very  next  day,  therefore,  Yeronique  wrote  to  M.  Grosse- 
tete,  and  in  answer  to  her  letter  three  saddle-horses  arrived 
from  Limoges  for  her  in  less  than  a  week.  M.  Bonnet  made 
inquiries,  and  sent  the  postmaster's  son  to  the  chateau;  the 
young  fellow,  Maurice  Champion  by  name,  was  only  too 
pleased  to  put  himself  at  Mme.  Graslin's  disposal,  with  a 
chance  of  earning  some  fifty  crowns.  Yeronique  took  a  liking 
for  the  lad — round-faced,  black-eyed,  and  black-haired,  short, 
and  well-built — and  he  was  at  once  installed  as  groom ;  he  was 
to  ride  out  with  his  mistress  and  to  take  charge  of  the  horses. 

The  head  forester  at  Montegnac  was  a  native  of  Limoges, 
an  old  quartermaster  in  the  Eoyal  Guard.  He  had  been  trans- 
ferred from  another  estate  when  the  Due  de  Navarreins  began 
to  think  of  selling  the  Montegnac  lands,  and  wanted  informa- 
tion to  guide  him  in  the  matter;  but  in  Montegnac  Forest 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  143 

Jerome  Colorat  only  saw  waste  land,  never  likely  to  come 
under  cultivation,  timber  valueless  for  lack  of  means  of  trans-  • 
port,  gardens  run  wild,  and  a  castle  in  ruins,  calling  for  a 
vast  outlay  if  it  was  to  be  set  in  order  and  made  habitable. 
He  saw  wide  rock-strewn  spaces  and  conspicuous  gray  patches 
of  granite  even  in  the  forest,  and  the  honest  but  unintelligent 
servant  took  fright  at  these  things.  This  was  how  the  prop- 
erty had  come  into  the  market. 

Mme.  Graslin  sent  for  this  forester. 

"Colorat,"  she  said,  "I  shall  most  probably  ride  out  to-mor- 
row morning  and  every  following  day.  You  should  know  the 
different  bits  of  outlying  land  which  M.  Graslin  added  to 
the  estate,  and  you  must  point  them  out  to  me ;  I  want  to  see 
everything  for  myself." 

The  servants  at  the  chateau  were  delighted  at  this  change 
in  Veronique's  life.  Aline  found  out  her  mistress'  old  black 
riding  habit,  and  mended  it,  without  being  told  to  do  so,  and 
next  morning,  with  inexpressible  pleasure,  Mme.  Sauviat  saw 
her  daughter  dressed  for  a  riding  excursion.  With  Champion 
and  the  forester  as  her  guides,  Mme.  Graslin  set  herself  first 
of  all  to  climb  the  heights.  She  wanted  to  understand  the 
position  of  the  slopes  and  the  glens,  the  natural  roadways 
cleft  in  the  long  ridge  of  the  mountain.  She  would  measure 
her  task,  study  the  course  of  the  streams,  and  see  the  rough 
material  of  the  cure's  schemes.  The  forester  and  Champion 
were  often  obliged  to  consult  their  memories,  for  the  mountain 
paths  were  scarcely  visible  in  that  wild  country.  Colorat  went 
in  front,  and  Champion  followed  a  few  paces  from  her  side. 

So  long  as  they  kept  to  the  denser  forest,  climbing  and 
descending  the  continual  undulations  of  a  French  mountain 
district,  its  wonders  filled  Veronique's  mind.  The  mighty 
trees  which  had  stood  for  centuries  amazed  her,  until  she 
saw  so  many  that  they  ceased  to  be  a  surprise.  Then  others 
succeeded,  full  grown  and  ready  for  felling;  or  in  a  forest 
clearing  some  single  pine  risen  to  giant  height;  or,  stranger 
still,  some  common  shrub,  a  dwarf  growth  elsewhere,  here 
.risen,  under  some  unusual  conditions,  to  the  height  of  a  tree 


144  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

near  as  old  as  the  soil  in  which  it  grew.  The  wreaths  of  mist 
rolling  over  the  bare  rocks  filled  her  with  indescribable  feel- 
ings. Higher  yet,  pale  furrows  cut  by  the  melting  snows 
looked  like  scars  far  up  on  the  mountain  sides;  there  were 
bleak  ravines  in  which  no  plant  grew,  hillside  slopes  where 
the  soil  had  been  washed  away,  leaving  bare  the  rock  clefts, 
where  the  hundred-year-old  chestnuts  grew  straight  and  tall 
as  pines  in  the  Alps;  sometimes  they  went  by  vast  shifting 
sands,  or  boggy  places  where  the  trees  are  few;  by  fallen 
masses  of  granite,  overhanging  crags,  dark  glens,  wide 
stretches  of  burnt  grass  or  moor,  where  the  heather  was  still 
in  bloom,  arid  and  lonely  spots  where  the  caper  grows  and 
the  juniper,  then  through  meadows  covered  with  fine  short 
grass,  where  the  rich  alluvial  soil  had  been  brought  down 
and  deposited  century  after  century  by  the  mountain  torrents ; 
in  short,  this  rapid  ride  gave  her  something  like  a  bird's-eye 
view  of  the  land,  a  glimpse  of  the  dreariness  and  grandeur, 
the  strength  and  sweetness,  of  nature's  wilder  moods  in  the 
mountain  country  of  midland  France.  And  by  dint  of  gazing 
at  these  pictures  so  various  in  form,  but  instinct  with  the 
same  thought,  trie  deep  sadness  expressed  by  the  wild  ruined 
land  in  its  barrenness  and  neglect  passed  into  her  own 
thoughts,  and  found  a  response  in  her  secret  soul.  As, 
through  some  gap  in  the  woods,  she  looked  down  on  the  gray 
stretch  of  plain  below,  or  when  their  way  led  up  some  parched 
ravine  where  a  few  stunted  shrubs  starved  among  the  boulders 
and  the  sand,  by  sheer  reiteration  of  the  same  sights  she  fell 
under  the  influence  of  this  stern  scenery;  it  called  up  new 
ideas  in  her  mind,  stirred  to  a  sense  of  the  significance  under- 
lying these  outward  and  visible  forms.  There  is  no  spot  in 
a  forest  but  has  this  inner  sense,  not  a  clearing,  not  a  thicket, 
but  has  an  analogy  in  the  labyrinth  of  the  human  thought. 

Who  is  there  with  a  thinking  brain  or  a  wounded  heart 
that  can  pass  through  a  forest  and  find  the  forest  dumb? 
Before  you  are  aware  its  voice  is  in  your  ears,  a  soothing  or 
an  awful  voice,  but  more  often  soothing  than  awful.  And 
if  you  were  to  examine  very  closely  into  the  causes  of  this 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  145 

sensation,  this  solemn,  incomplex,  subduing,  and  mysterious 
forest-influence  that  comes  over  you,  perhaps  you  will  find 
its  source  in  the  sublime  and  subtle  effect  of  the  presence  of 
BO  many  creatures  all  obedient  to  their  destinies,  immovable 
in  submission.  Sooner  or  later  the  overwhelming  sense  of  the 
abidingness  of  nature  fills  your  heart  and  stirs  deeper  feel- 
ings, until  at  length  you  grow  restless  to  find  God  in  it.  And 
so  it  was  that  with  the  silence  of  the  mountain  heights  about 
her,  out  in  the  pure  clear  air  with  the  forest  scents  in  it, 
Veronique  recovered,  as  she  told  M.  Bonnet  in  the  evening, 
the  certainty  of  Divine  mercy.  She  had  glimpses  of  the  pos- 
sibility of  an  order  of  things  above  and  beyond  that  in  which 
her  musings  had  hitherto  revolved.  She  felt  something  like 
happiness.  For  a  long  time  past  she  had  not  known  such 
peace.  Could  it  have  been  that  she  was  conscious  of  a  certain 
likeness  between  this  country  and  the  waste  and  dried-up 
places  in  her  own  soul?  Did  she  look  with  a  certain  exulta- 
tion on  the  troubles  of  nature  with  some  thought  that  matter 
was  punished  here  for  no  sin?  Certain  it  is  that  her  inner 
self  was  strongly  stirred. 

More  than  once  Colorat  and  Champion  looked  at  her,  and 
then  at  each  other,  as  if  for  them  she  were  transfigured.  One 
spot  in  particular  that  they  reached  in  the  steep  bed  of  a  dry 
torrent  seemed  to  Veronique  to  be  unspeakably  arid.  It  was 
with  a  certain  surprise  that  she  found  herself  longing  to  hear 
the  sound  of  falling  water  in  those  scorching  ravines. 

"Always  to  love !"  she  thought.  The  words  seemed  like 
a  reproach  spoken  aloud  by  a  voice.  In  confusion  she  urged 
her  horse  blindly  up  towards  the  summit  of  the  mountain  of 
the  Correze,  and  in  spite  of  her  guides  dashed  up  to  the  top 
(called  the  Living  Eock),  and  stood  there  alone.  For  several 
moments  she  scanned  the  whole  country  below  her.  She  had 
heard  the  secret  voices  of  so  many  existences  asking  to  live, 
and  now  something  took  place  within  her  that  determined 
her  to  devote  herself  to  this  work  with  all  the  perseverance 
which  she  had  already  displayed  to  admiration.  She  tied 
her  horse's  bridle  to  a  tree  and  sat  down  on  a  slab  of  rock. 


146  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

Her  eyes  wandered  over  the  land  where  nature  showed  herself 
so  harsh  a  step-dame,  and  felt  within  her  own  heart  some- 
thing of  the  mother's  yearning  which  she  had  felt  over  her 
child.  Her  half-unconscious  meditations,  which,  to  use  her 
own  beautiful  metaphor,  "had  sifted  her  heart,"  had  prepared 
her  to  receive  the  sublime  teaching  of  the  scene  that  lay  before 
her. 

"It  was  then,"  she  told  the  cure,  "that  I  understood  that 
our  souls  need  to  be  tilled  quite  as  much  as  the  land." 

The  pale  November  sunlight  shone  over  the  wide  landscape, 
but  already  a  few  gray  clouds  were  gathering,  driven  across 
the  sky  by  a  cold  west  wind.  It  was  now  about  three  o'clock. 
Veronique  had  taken  four  hours  to  reach  the  point;  but,  as 
is  the  wont  of  those  who  are  gnawed  by  profound  inward 
misery,  she  gave  no  heed  to  anything  without.  At  that  mo- 
ment her  life  shared  the  sublime  movement  of  nature  and 
dilated  within  her. 

"Do  not  stay  up  there  any  longer,  madame,"  said  a  man's 
voice,  and  something  in  its  tone  thrilled  her.  "You  cannot 
reach  home  again  in  any  direction  if  you  do,  for  the  nearest 
house  lies  a  couple  of  leages  away,  and  it  is  impossible  to  find 
your  way  through  the  forest  in  the  dark.  And  even  those 
risks  are  nothing  compared  with  the  risk  you  are  running 
where  you  are ;  in  a  few  moments  it  will  be  deadly  cold  on  the 
peak;  no  one  knows  the  why  or  wherefore,  but  it  has  been 
the  death  of  many  a  one  before  now." 

Mme.  Graslin,  looking  down,  saw  a  face  almost  black  with 
sunburn,  and  two  eyes  that  gleamed  from  it  like  tongues  of 
fire.  A  shock  of  brown  hair  hung  on  either  side  of  the  face, 
and  a  long  pointed  beard  wagged  beneath  it.  The  owner  of 
the  face  respectfully  raised  one  of  the  great  broad-brimmed 
hats  which  the  peasantry  wear  in  the  midland  districts  of 
France,  and  displayed  a  bald  but  magnificent  brow,  such  as 
sometimes  in  a  poor  man  compels  the  attention  of  passers-by. 
Veronique  felt  not  the  slightest  fear;  for  a  woman  in  such 
a  position  as  hers,  all  the  petty  considerations  which  cause 
feminine  tremors  have  ceased  to  exist. 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  147 

"How  did  you  come  there?"  she  asked  him. 

"I  live  here,  hard  by,"  the  stranger  answered. 

"And  what  do  you  do  in  this  out-of-the-way  place  ?"  asked 
Veronique. 

"I  live  in  it." 

"But  how,  and  on  what  do  you  live  ?" 

"They  pay  me  a  trifle  for  looking  after  this  part  of  the 
forest,"  he  said,  pointing  to  the  slopes  of  the  peak  opposite 
the  plains  of  Montegnac.  As  he  moved,  Mme.  Graslin  caught 
sight  of  a  game-bag  and  the  muzzle  of  a  gun,  and  any  mis- 
givings she  might  have  entertained  vanished  forthwith. 

"Are  you  a  keeper  ?" 

"No,  madame.  You  can't  be  a  keeper  until  you  have  been 
sworn,  and  you  can't  take  the  oath  unless  you  have  all  your 
civic  rights " 

"Then,  who  are  you?" 

"I  am  Farrabesche,"  said  the  man,  in  deep  humility,  with 
his  eyes  on  the  ground. 

The  name  told  Mme.  Graslin  nothing.  She  looked  at  the 
man  before  her.  In  an  exceedingly  kindly  face  there  were 
signs  of  latent  savagery;  the  uneven  teeth  gave  an  ironical 
turn,  a  suggestion  of  evil  hardihood  to  the  mouth  and  blood- 
red  lips.  In  person  he  was  of  middle  height,  broad  in  the 
shoulders,  short  in  the  neck,  which  was  very  full  and  deeply 
sunk.  He  had  the  large  hairy  hands  characteristic  of  violent 
tempered  people  capable  of  abusing  their  physical  advan- 
tages. His  last  words  suggested  some  mystery,  and  his  bear- 
ing, face,  and  figure  all  combined  to  give  to  that  mystery  a  ter- 
rible interpretation. 

"So  you  are  in  my  employ?"  Veronique  said  gently. 

"Then  have  I  the  honor  of  speaking  to  Mme.  Graslin?" 
asked  Farrabesche. 

"Yes,  my  friend,"  said  she. 

Farrabesche  vanished  with  the  speed  of  some  wild  creature 
after  a  frightened  glance  at  his  mistress.  Veronique  hastily 
mounted  and  went  down  to  her  two  servants;  the  men  were 
growing  uneasy  about  her,  for  the  inexplicable  unwholesome- 


148  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

ness  of  the  Living  Eock  was  well  known  in  the  country. 
Colorat  begged  her  to  go  down  a  little  valley  into  the  plain. 
"It  would  be  dangerous  to  return  by  the  higher  ground,"  he 
said;  the  tracks  were  hard  to  find,  ancl  crossed  each  other, 
and  in  spite  of  his  knowledge  of  the  country,  he  might  lose 
himself. 

Once  in  the  plain,  Veronique  slackened  the  pace  of  her 
horse. 

"Who  is  this  Farrabesche  whom  you  employ?"  she  asked, 
turning  to  the  head  forester. 

"Did  madame  meet  him?"  exclaimed  Colorat. 

"Yes,  but  he  ran  away." 

"Poor  fellow!  Perhaps  he  does  not  know  how  kind 
madame  is." 

"But,  after  all,  what  has  he  done  ?" 

"Why,  madame,  Farrabesche  is  a  murderer,"  Champion 
blurted  out. 

"Then,  of  course,  he  was  pardoned,  was  he  not  ?"  Veronique 
asked  in  a  tremulous  voice. 

"No,  madame,"  Colorat  answered.  "Farrabesche  was  tried 
at  the  Assizes,  and  condemned  to  ten  years'  penal  servitude; 
but  he  only  did  half  his  time,  for  they  let  him  oft*  the  rest  of 
the  sentence;  he  came  back  from  the  hulks  in  1827.  He  owes 
his  life  to  M.  le  Cure,  who  persuaded  him  to  give  himself  up. 
Judged  by  default,  and  sentenced  to  death,  they  would  have 
caught  him  sooner  or  later,  and  he  would  have  been  in  a  bad 
way.  M.  Bonnet  went  out  to  look  for  him  at  the  risk  of  his 
life.  Nobody  knows  what  he  said  to  Farrabesche;  they  were 
alone  for  a  couple  of  days;  on  the  third  he  brought  Farra- 
besche back  to  Tulle,  and  there  he  gave  himself  up.  M. 
Bonnet  went  to  see  a  clever  lawyer,  and  got  him  to  take  up 
Farrabesche's  case;  and  Farrabesche  came  off  with  ten  years 
in  jail.  M.  le  Cure  used  to  go  to  see  him  while  he  was  in 
prison;  and  that  fellow  yonder,  who  was  a  terror  to  the  whole 
countryside,  grew  as  meek  as  any  maid,  and  let  them  take 
him  off  to  prison  quietly.  When  he  came  out  again,  he  settled 
down  hereabouts  under  M.  le  Cure's  direction.  People  mind 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  149 

what  they  say  to  him;  he  always  goes  on  Sundays  and  holi- 
days to  the  services  and  to  mass.  He  has  a  seat  in  the 
church  along  with  the  rest  of  us,  but  he  always,  keeps  by  him- 
self close  to  the  wall.  He  takes  the  sacrament  from  time 
to  time,  but  at  the  Communion-table  he  keeps  apart  too." 

"And  this  man  has  killed  another  man !" 

"One  ?"  asked  Colorat ;  "he  has  killed  a  good  many,  he  has ! 
But  he  is  not  a  bad  sort  for  all  that." 

"Is  it  possible?"  cried  Veronique,  and  in  her  amazement 
she  let  the  bridle  fall  on  the  horse's  neck. 

The  head  forester  asked  nothing  better  than  to  tell  the 
tale. 

"You  see,  madame,"  he  said,  "Farrabesche  maybe  was  in 
the  right  at  bottom.  He  was  the  last  of  the  Farrabesches, 
an  old  family  in  the  Correze ;  ay,  yes !  His  eldest  brother, 
Captain  Farrabesche,  was  killed  just  ten  years  before  in 
Italy,  at  Montenotte ;  only  twenty-two  he  was,  and  a  captain ! 
That  is  what  you  might  call  bad  luck,  now,  isn't  it  ?  And  he 
had  a  little  book-learning  too;  he  could  read  and  write,  and 
he  had  made  up  his  mind  to  be  a  general.  They  were  sorry 
at  home  when  he  died,  as  well  they  might  be,  indeed !  I  was 
in  the  army  with  The  Other*  then;  and  I  heard  talk  of  his 
death.  Oh !  Captain  Farrabesche  fell  gloriously ;  he  saved 
the  army,  he  did,  and  the  Little  Corporal !  I  was  serving 
at  that  time  under  General  Steingel,  a  German — that  is  to 
say,  an  Alsatian — a  fine  soldier  he  was,  but  shortsighted,  and 
that  was  how  he  came  by  his  end,  sometime  after  Captain 
Farrabesche.  The  youngest  boy,  that  is  the  one  yonder,  was 
just  six  years  old  when  he  heard  them  talking  about  his  big 
brother's  death.  The  second  brother  went  into  the  army  too, 
but  he  went  as  a  private  soldier;  and  died  a  sergeant,  first 
regiment  of  the  Guard,  a  fine  post,  at  the  battle  of  Austerlitz, 
where,  you  see,  madame,  they  manoeuvred  us  all  as  smoothly 
as  if  it  had  been  review  day  at  the  Tuileries.  ...  I  was 
there  myself.  Oh!  I  was  lucky;  I  went  through  it  all,  and 
never  came  in  for  a  single  wound.  .  .  .  Well,  then,  our 

*L'Aulre,  viz.  Napoleon. 


150  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

Farrabesche,  the  youngest,  brave  though  he  was,  took  it  into 
his  head  that  he  would  not  go  for  a  soldier.  And  'tis  a  fact, 
the  army  did  Jiot  suit  that  family.  When  the  sous-prefet 
wanted  him  in  1811,  he  took  to  the  woods;  a  'refractory  con- 
script,' eh!  that's  what  they  used  to  call  them.  Thereupon 
a  gang  of  chauffeurs  got  hold  of  him  by  fair  means  or  foul, 
and  he  took  to  warming  people's  feet  at  last !  You  under- 
stand that  no  one  except  M.  le  Cure  knows  what  he  did  along 
with  those  rascals,  asking  their  pardon!  Many  a  brush  he 
had  with  the  gendarmes,  and  the  regular  troops  as  well! 
First  and  last  he  has  seen  seven  skirmishes." 

"People  say  that  he  killed  two  soldiers  and  three  gen- 
darmes!" put  in  Champion. 

"Who  is  to  know  how  many  ?"  Colorat  answered.  "He  did 
aot  tell  them.  At  last,  madame,  almost  all  the  others  were 
eaught ;  but  he,  an  active  young  fellow,  knowing  the  country 
as  he  did,  always  got  away.  That  gang  of  chauffeurs  used  to 
hang  on  the  outskirts  of  Brives  and  Tulle,  and  they  would 
often  come  over  here  to  lie  low,  because  Farrabesche  knew 
places  where  they  could  hide  easily.  After  1814  nobody  trou- 
bled about  him  any  more,  the  conscription  was  abolished; 
but  he  had  to  spend  the  year  1815  in  the  woods.  As  he  could 
not  sit  down  with  his  arms  folded  and  live,  he  helped  once 
more  to  stop  a  coach  down  below  yonder  in  the  ravine;  but 
in  the  end  he  took  M.  le  Cure's  advice,  and  gave  himself  up. 
It  was  not  easy  to  find  witnesses ;  nobody  dared  give  evidence 
against  him.  Then  M.  le  Cure  and  his  lawyer  worked  so  hard 
for  him,  that  they  let  him  off  with  ten  years.  He  was  lucky 
after  being  a  chauffeur,  for  a  chauffeur  he  was." 

"But  what  is  a  chauffeur?" 

"If  you  like,  madame,  I  will  just  tell  you  the  sort  of  thing 
they  did,  by  all  that  I  can  make  out  from  one  and  another, 
for  you  will  understand  that  I  was  never  a  chauffeur  myself. 
It  was  not  nice,  but  necessity  knows  no  law.  It  was  like  this : 
if  they  suspected  some  farmer  or  landowner  of  having  money 
in  his  possession,  seven  or  eight  of  them  would  drop  in  in 
the  middle  of  the  night,  and  they  would  light  a  fire  aixJ  have 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  151 

supper  there  and  then,  when  supper  was  over,  if  the  master 
of  the  house  would  not  give  them  as  much  money  as  they 
asked,  they  would  tie  his  feet  up  to  the  pot-hook  at  the  back 
of  the  fire,  and  would  not  let  him  go  until  they  had  what 
they  asked  for.  That  was  all.  They  came  in  masks.  With 
so  many  expeditions,  there  were  a  few  mishaps.  Lord  !  yes ; 
there  are  obstinate  folk  and  stingy  people  everywhere.  There 
was  a  farmer  once,  old  Cochegrue,  a  regular  skinflint  he  was, 
he  let  them  burn  his  feet ;  and,  well,  the  man  died  of  it.  There 
was  M.  David's  wife  too,  not  far  from  Brives ;  she  died  after- 
wards of  the  fright  they  gave  her,  simply  seeing  them  tie  her 
husband's  feet.  'Just  give  them  what  you  have !'  she  said  to 
him  as  she  wept.  He  would  not,  and  she  showed  them  the 
hiding-place.  For  five  years  the  chauffeurs  were  the  terror  of 
the  countryside;  but  get  this  well  into  your  pate — I  beg 
pardon,  madame ! — that  more  than  one  of  them  belonged  to 
good  families,  and  that  sort  of  people  are  not  the  ones  to  let 
themselves  be  nabbed." 

Mme.  Graslin  listened  and  made  no  reply.  There  was 
a  moment's  pause;  then  young  Champion,  eager  to  interest 
his  mistress  in  his  turn,  was  anxious  to  tell  what  he  knew 
of  Farrabesche. 

"Madame  ought  to  hear  the  whole  truth  of  the  matter. 
Farrabesche  has  not  his  match  on  horseback  or  afoot.  He 
will  fell  an  ox  with  a  blow  of  his  fist !  He  can  carry  seven 
hundred-weight,  that  he  can!  and  there  is  not  a  better  shot 
anywhere.  When  I  was  a  little  chap  they  used  to  tell  me  tales 
about  Farrabesche.  One  day  he  and  three  of  his  comrades 
were  surprised ;  they  fought  till  one  was  killed  and  two  were 
wounded  ;  well  and  good,  Farrabesche  saw  that  he  was  caught  ;* 
bah !  he  jumps  on  a  gendarme's  horse  behind  the  man,  claps 
spurs  to  the  animal,  which  bolts  off  at  a  furious  gallop  and  is 
out  of  sight,  he  gripping  that  gendarme  round  the  waist  all 
the  time;  he  hugged  the  man  so  tight  that  after  a  while  he 
managed  to  fling  him  off  and  ride  single  in  the  saddle,  so 
he  escaped  and  came  by  a  horse.  And  he  had  the  impudence 
to  sell  it  directly  afterwards  ten  leagues  on  the  other  side 


152  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

of  Limoges.  He  lay  in  hiding  for  three  months  after  that 
exploit,  and  no  one  could  find  him.  They  offered  a  reward  of 
a  hundred  louis  to  any  one  who  would  betray  him." 

"Another  time,"  added  Colorat,  "as  to  those  hundred  louis 
put  on  his  head  by  the  prefect  at  Tulle,  Farrabesche  put  a 
cousin  of  his  in  the  way  of  earning  it — Giriex  it  was,  over  at 
Vizay.  His  cousin  denounced  him,  and  seemed  as  if  he 
meant  to  give  him  up.  Oh!  he  actually  gave  him  up; 
and  very  glad  the  gendarmes  were  to  take  him  to  Tulle. 
But  he  did  not  go  far;  they  had  to  put  him  in  the 
prison  at  Lubersac,  and  he  got  away  the  very  first  night, 
by  way  of  a  hole  made  by  one  of  the  gang,  one  Gabil- 
leau,  a  deserter  from  the  17th,  executed  at  Tulle,  who  was 
moved  away  the  night  before  he  expected  to  escape.  A  pretty 
character  Farrabesche  gained  by  these  adventures.  The  troop 
had  trusty  friends,  you  know.  And,  besides,  people  liked  the 
chauffeurs.  Lord,  they  were  quite  different  then  from  what 
they  are  nowadays,  jolly  fellows  every  one  of  them,  that 
spent  their  money  like  princes.  Just  imagine  it,  madame ;  he 
finds  the  gendarmes  on  his  track  one  evening,  does  he  ?  Well, 
he  slipped  through  their  fingers  that  time  by  lying  twenty- 
four  hours  in  a  pond  in  a  farmyard,  drawing  his  breath 
through  a  hole  in  the  straw  at  the  edge  of  a  dung  heap.  What 
did  a  little  discomfort  like  that  matter  to  him  when  he  had 
spent  whole  nights  up  among  the  little  branches  at  the  very 
top  of  a  tree  where  a  sparrow  could  hardly  hold,  watching 
the  soldiers  looking  for  him,  passing  and  repassing  below. 
Farrabesche  was  one  of  the  five  or  six  chauffeurs  whom  they 
never  could  catch;  for  as  he  was  a  fellow-countryman,  and 
joined  the  gang  perforce  (for,  after  all,  he  only  took  to  the 
woods  to  escape  the  conscription),  all  the  women  took  his 
part,  and  that  counts  for  much." 

"So  Farrabesche  has  really  killed  several  men,"  Mme. 
Graslin  said  again. 

"Certainly,"  Colorat  replied ;  "they  even  say  that  it  was  he 
who  murdered  the  traveler  in  the  coach  in  1812;  but  the 
courier  and  postilion,  the  only  witnesses  who  could  have  iden- 
tified him,  were  dead  when  he  came  up  for  trial." 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  153 

"And  the  robbery?"  asked  Mme.  Graslin. 

"Oh!  They  took  all  there  was;  but  the  five-and-twenty 
thousand  francs  which  they  found  belonged  to  the  Govern- 
ment." 

For  another  league  Mme.  Graslin  rode  on  in  silence.  The 
sun  had  set,  and  in  the  moonlight  the  gray  plain  looked  like 
the  open  sea.  Once  or  twice  Champion  and  Colorat  looked  at 
Mme.  Graslin,  for  her  silence  made  them  uneasy,  and  both 
were  greatly  disturbed  to  see  that  her  eyes  were  red  with 
much  weeping  and  full  of  tears,  which  fell  drop  by  drop 
and  glittered  on  her  cheeks. 

"Oh !  don't  be  sorry  for  him,  madame,"  said'  Colorat.  "The 
fellow  led  a  jolly  life,  and  has  had  pretty  sweethearts.  And 
if  the  police  keep  an  eye  on  him  now,  he  is  protected  by  M.  le 
Cure's  esteem  and  friendship;  for  he  repented,  and  in  the 
convict's  prison  he  behaved  in  the  most  exemplary  way. 
Everybody  knows  that  he  is  as  good  as  the  best  among  us; 
only  he  is  so  proud,  he  has  no  mind  to  lay  himself  open  to  any 
slight,  but  he  lives  peaceably  and  does  good  after  his  fashion. 
Over  the  other  side  of  the  Living  Eock  he  has  ten  acres  or 
so  of  young  saplings  of  his  own  planting;  and  when  he  sees 
a  place  for  a  tree  in  the  forest,  he  will  stick  one  of  them  in. 
Then  he  lops  off  the  dead  branches,  and  collects  the  wood,  and 
does  it  up  in  faggots  ready  for  poor  people.  And  the  poor 
people,  knowing  that  they  can  have  firewood  all  ready  for 
the  asking,  go  to  him  instead  of  helping  themselves  and  dam- 
aging your  woods.  So  if  he  still  'warms  people's  feet/  as  you 
may  say,  it  does  them  good  now.  Farrabesche  is  fond  of 
your  forest ;  he  looks  after  it  as  if  it  were  his  own." 

"And  yet  he  lives !  .  .  .  quite  alone."  Mme.  Graslin 
hastily  added  the  last  two  words. 

"Asking  your  pardon,  madame,  no.  He  is  bringing  up  a 
little  lad ;  going  fifteen  now  he  is,"  said  Maurice  Champion. 

"Faith,  yes,  that  he  is,"  Colorat  remarked,  "for  La  Curieux 
had  that  child  a  good  while  before  Farrabesche  gave  himself 
up." 

"Is  it  his  son  ?"  asked  Mme.  Graslin. 


154  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

"Well,  every  one  thinks  so." 

"And  why  did  he  not  marry  the  girl  ?" 

"Why?  Because  they  would  have  caught  him!  And,  be- 
sides, when  La  Curieux  knew  that  he  was  condemned,  she 
left  the  neighborhood,  poor  thing." 

"Was  she  pretty?" 

"Oh,  my  mother  says  that  she  was  very  much  like — dear 
me!  another  girl  who  left  the  place  too — very  much  like 
Denise  Tascheron." 

"Was  he  loved  ?"  asked  Mme.  Graslin. 

"Bah !  yes,  because  he  was  a  chauffeur!"  said  Colorat.  "The 
women  always  fall  in  love  with  anything  out  of  the  way.  But 
for  all  that,  nothing  astonished  people  hereabouts  so  much  as 
this  love  affair.  Catherine  Curieux  was  a  good  girl  who  lived 
like  a  virgin  saint ;  she  was  looked  on  as  a  paragon  of  virtue 
in  her  neighborhood  over  at  Vizay,  a  large  village  in  the 
Correze,  on  the  boundary  of  two  departments.  Her  father 
and  mother  were  tenants  of  M.  Brezac's.  Catherine  Curieux 
was  quite  seventeen  years  old  at  the  time  of  Farrabesche's 
sentence.  The  Farrabesches  were  an  old  family  out  of  the 
same  district,  but  they  settled  on  the  Montegnac  lands;  they 
had  the  largest  farm  in  the  village.  Farrabesche's  father  and 
mother  are  dead  now,  and  La  Curieux's  three  sisters  are  mar- 
ried ;  one  lives  at  Aubusson,  one  at  Limoges,  and  one  at  Saint- 
Leonard." 

"Do  you  think  that  Farrabesche  knows  where  Catherine 
is?"  asked  Mme.  Graslin. 

"If  he  knew,  he  would  break  his  bounds.  Oh !  he  would  go 
to  her.  ...  As  soon  as  he  came  back  he  asked  her 
father  and  mother  (through  M.  Bonnet)  for  the  child.  La 
Curieux's  father  and  mother  were  taking  care  of  the  child; 
M.  Bonnet  persuaded  them  to  give  him  up  to  Farrabesche." 

"Does  nobody  know  what  became  of  her?" 

"Bah!"  said  Colorat.  "The  lass  thought  herself  ruined, 
she  was  afraid  to  stop  in  the  place  !  She  went  to  Paris.  What 
does  she  do  there?  That  is  the  rub.  As  for  looking  for  her 
in  Paris,  you  might  as  well  try  to  find  a  marble  among  the 
flints  there  in  the  plain." 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  155 

Colorat  pointed  to  the  plain  of  Montegnac  as  he  spoke. 
By  this  time  Mme.  Graslin  was  only  a  few  paces  from  the 
great  gateway  of  the  chateau.  Mme.  Sauviat,  in  anxiety, 
was  waiting  there  for  her  with  Aline  and  the  servants;  they 
did  not  know  what  to  think  of  so  long  an  absence. 

"Well,"  said  Mme.  Sauviat,  as  she  helped  her  daughter  to 
dismount,  "you  must  be  horribly  tired." 

"No,  dear  mother,"  Mme.  Graslin  answered,  in  an  unsteady 
voice,  and  Mme.  Sauviat,  looking  at  her  daughter,  saw  that 
she  had  been  weeping  for  a  long  time. 

Mme.  Graslin  went  into  the  house  with  Aline,  her  confi- 
dential servant,  and  shut  herself  into  her  room.  She  would 
not  see  her  mother;  and  when  Mme.  Sauviat  tried  to  enter, 
Aline  met  the  old  Auvergnate  with  "Madame  is  asleep." 

The  next  morning  Veronique  set  out  on  horseback,  with 
Maurice  as  her  sole  guide.  She  took  the  way  by  which  they 
had  returned  the  evening  before,  so  as  to  reach  the  Living 
Rock  as  quickly  as  might  be.  As  they  climbed  up  the  ravine 
which  separates  the  last  ridge  in  the  forest  from  the  actual 
summit  of  the  mountain  (for  the  Living  Eock,  seen  from 
the  plain,  seems  to  stand  alone),  Veronique  bade  Maurice 
show  her  the  way  to  Farrabesche's  cabin  and  wait  with  the 
horses  until  she  came  back.  She  meant  to  go  alone.  Maurice 
went  with  her  as  far  as  a  pathway  which  turned  off  towards 
the  opposite  side  of  the  Living  Eock,  furthest  from  the  plain, 
and  pointed  out  the  thatched  roof  of  a  cottage  half  hidden 
on  the  mountain  side;  below  it  lay  the  nursery-ground  of 
which  Colorat  had  spoken. 

It  was  almost  noon.  A  thin  streak  of  smoke  rising  from 
the  cottage  chimney  guided  Veronique,  who  soon  reached 
the  place,  but  would  not  show  herself  at  first.  At  the  sight  of 
the  little  dwelling,  and  the  garden  about  it,  with  its  fence 
of  dead  thorns,  she  stood  for  a  few  moments  lost  in  thoughts 
known  to  her  alone.  Several  acres  of  grass  land,  enclosed 
by  a  quickset  hedge,  wound  away  beyond  the  garden ;  the  low 
spreading  branches  of  apple  and  pear  and  plum  trees  were 


156  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

visible  here  and  there  in  the  field.  Above  the  house,  on  the 
sandier  soil  of  the  high  mountain  slopes,  there  rose  a  splendid 
grove  of  tall  chestnut  trees,  their  topmost  leaves  turned  yellow 
and  sere. 

Mme.  Graslin  pushed  open  the  crazy  wicket  wnich  did 
duty  as  a  gate,  and  saw  before  her  the  shed,  the  little  yard, 
and  all  the  picturesque  and  living  details  of  the  dwellings 
of  the  poor.  Something  surely  of  the  grace  of  the  open  fields 
hovers  about  them.  Who  is  there  that  is  not  moved  by  the 
revelation  of  lowly,  almost  vegetative  lives — the  clothes  dry- 
ing on  the  hedge,  the  rope  of  onions  hanging  from  the  roof, 
the  iron  cooking  pots  set  out  in  the  sun,  the  wooden  bench 
hidden  among  the  honeysuckle  leaves,  the  houseleeks  that 
grow  on  the  ridges  of  almost  every  thatched  hovel  in  France  ? 

Veronique  found  it  impossible  to  appear  unannounced  in 
her  keeper's  cottage,  for  two  fine  hunting-dogs  began  to  bark 
as  soon  as  they  heard  the  rustle  of  her  riding-habit  on  the 
dead  leaves ;  she  gathered  up  her  skirts  on  her  arm,  and  went 
towards  the  house.  Farrabesche  and  the  boy  were  sitting  on 
a  wooden  bench  outside.  Both  rose  to  their  feet  and  un- 
covered respectfully,  but  without  a  trace  of  servility. 

"I  have  been  told  that  you  are  seeing  after  my  interests," 
said  Veronique,  with  her  eyes  fixed  on  the  lad;  "so  I  deter- 
mined to  see  your  cottage  and  nursery  of  saplings  for  myself, 
and  to  ask  you  about  some  improvements." 

"I  am  at  your  service,  madame,"  replied  Farrabesche. 

Veronique  was  admiring  the  lad.  It  was  a  charming  face ; 
somewhat  sunburned  and  brown,  but  in  shape  a  faultless 
oval;  the  outlines  of  the  forehead  were  delicately  fine,  the 
orange-colored  eyes  exceedingly  bright  and  alert;  the  long 
dark  hair,  parted  on  the  forehead,  fell  upon  either  side  of  the 
brow.  Taller  than  most  boys  of  his  age,  he  was  very  nearly  five 
feet  high.  His  trousers  were  of  the  same  coarse  brown  linen 
as  his  shirt;  he  wore  a  threadbare  waistcoat  of  rough  blue 
cloth  with  horn  buttons,  a  short  jacket  of  the  material  face- 
tiously described  as  "Maurienne  velvet,"  in  which  Savoyards 
are  wont  to  dress,  and  a  pair  of  iron-bound  shoes  on  his  other- 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  15? 

•wise  bare  feet  to  complete  the  costume.  His  father  was 
dressed  in  the  same  fashion;  but  instead  of  the  little  lad's 
brown  woolen  cap,  Farrabesche  wore  the  wide-brimmed 
peasant's  hat.  In  spite  of  its  quick  intelligence,  the  child's 
face  wore  the  look  of  gravity  (evidently  unforced)  peculiar 
to  young  creatures  brought  up  in  solitude;  he  must  have  put 
himself  in  harmony  with  the  silence  and  the  life  of  the  forest. 
Indeed,  in  both  Farrabesche  and  his  son  the  physical  side  of 
their  natures  seemed  to  be  the  most  highly  developed;  they 
possessed  the  peculiar  faculties  of  the  savage — the  keen  sight, 
the  alertness,  the  complete  mastery  of  the  body  as  an  instru- 
ment, the  quick  hearing,  the  signs  of  activity  and  intelligent 
skill.  No  sooner  did  the  boy's  eyes  turn  to  his  father  than 
Mme.  Graslin  divined  that  here  was  the  limitless  affection 
in  which  the  prompting  of  natural  instinct  and  deliberate 
thought  were  confirmed  by  the  most  effectual  happiness. 

"Is  this  the  child  of  whom  I  have  heard  ?"  asked  Veronique, 
indicating  the  lad. 

"Yes,  madame." 

Veronique  signed  to  Farrabesche  to  come  a  few  paces  away. 
"But  have  you  taken  no  steps  towards  finding  his  mother?" 
she  asked. 

"Madame  does  not  know,  of  course,  that  I  am  not  allowed 
to  go  beyond  the  bounds  of  the  commune  where  I  am  liv- 
ing ': 

"And  have  you  never  heard  of  her  ?" 

"When  my  time  was  out,"  he  said,  "the  commissary  paid 
over  to  me  the  sum  of  a  thousand  francs,  which  had  been  sent 
me,  a  little  at  a  time,  every  quarter ;  the  rules  would  not  allow 
me  to  have  it  until  I  came  out.  I  thought  that  no  one  but 
Catherine  would  have  thought  of  me,  as  it  was  not  M.  Bonnet 
who  srr.it  it;  so  I  am  keeping  the  money  for  Benjamin." 

"A^    how  about  Catherine's  relations?" 

arfcv  f  thought  no  more  about  her  after  she  went  away. 
Besic'r  ,  they  did  their  part  by  looking  after  the  child." 

Vewnique  turned  to  go  towards  the  house. 

"Very  well,  Farrabesche/'  she  said;  "I  will  have  inquiry 


158  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

made,  so  as  to  make  sure  that  Catherine  is  still  living,  and 
where  she  is,  and  what  kind  of  life  she  is  leading " 

"Madame,  whatever  she  may  be,  I  shall  look  upon  it  as  good 
fortune  to  have  her  for  my  ^ife,"  the  man  cried  in  a  softened 
tone.  "It  is  for  her  to  show  reluctance,  not  for  me.  Our 
marriage  will  legitimatize  the  poor  hoy,  who  has  no  suspicion 
yet  of  how  he  stands." 

The  look  in  the  father's  eyes  told  the  tale  of  the  life  these 
two  outcasts  led  in  their  voluntary  exile ;  they  were  all  in  all 
to  each  other,  like  two  fellow-countrymen  in  the  midst  of 
a  desert. 

"So  you  love  Catherine  ?"  asked  Veronique. 

"It  is  not  so  much  that  I  love  her,  madame,"  he  answered, 
"as  that,  placed  as  I  am,  she  is  the  one  woman  in  the  world 
for  me." 

Mme.  Graslin  turned  swiftly,  and  went  as  far  as  the 
chestnut-trees,  as  if  some  pang  had  shot  through  her.  The 
keeper  thought  that  this  was  some  whim  of  hers,  and  did 
not  venture  to  follow.  For  nearly  a  quarter  of  an  hour  she 
sat,  apparently  engaged  in  looking  out  over  the  landscape. 
She  could  see  all  that  part  of  the  forest  which  lay  along  the 
side  of  the  valley,  with  the  torrent  in  the  bottom ;  it  was  dry 
now,  and  full  of  boulders,  a  sort  of  huge  ditch  shut  in  be- 
tween the  forest-covered  mountains  above  Montegnac  and 
another  parallel  range,  these  last  hills  beings  steep  though 
low,  and  so  bare  that  there  was  scarcely  so  much  as  a  starveling 
tree  here  and  there  to  crown  the  slopes,  where  a  few  rather 
melancholy-looking  birches,  juniper  bushes,  and  briars  were 
trying  to  grow.  This  second  range  belonged  to  a  neighboring 
estate,  and  lay  in  the  department  of  the  Correze;  indeed, 
the  cross-road  which  meanders  along  the  winding  valley  is 
the  boundary  line  of  the  arrondissement  of  Montegnac,  and 
also  of  the  two  estates.  The  opposite  side  of  the  valley  beyond 
the  torrent  was  quite  unsheltered  and  barren  enough.  °i  was 
a  sort  of  long  wall  with  a  slope  of  fine  woodland  beh/id  it. 
and  a  complete  contrast  in  its  bleakness  to  the  side  of  the 
mountain  on  which  Farrabesche's  cottage  stood.  Gnarled 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  159 

and  twisted  forms  on  the  one  side,  and  on  the  other  shapely 
growths  and  delicate  curving  lines ;  on  the  one  side  the  dreary, 
unchanging  silence  of  a  sloping  desert,  held  in  place  by  blocks 
of  stone  and  bare,  denuded  rocks,  and  on  the  other,  the  con- 
trasts of  green  among  the  trees.  Many  of  them  were  leafless 
now,  but  the  fine  variegated  tree  trunks  stood  up  straight 
and  tall  on  each  ledge,  and  the  branches  waved  as  the  wind 
stirred  through  them.  A  few  of  them,  the  oaks,,  elms,  beeches, 
and  chestnuts  which  held  out  longer  against  the  autumn  than 
the  rest,  still  retained  their  leaves — golden,  or  bronze,  or 
purple. 

In  the  direction  of  Montegnac  the  valley  opens  out  so 
widely  that  the  two  sides  describe  a  vast  horseshoe.  Vero- 
nique,  with  her  back  against  a  chestnut-tree,  could  see  glen 
after  glen  arranged  after  the  stages  of  an  amphitheatre,  the 
topmost  crests  of  the  trees  rising  one  above  the  other  in  rows 
like  the  heads  of  spectators.  On  the  other  side  of  the  ridge 
lay  her  own  park,  in  which,  at  a  later  time,  this  beautiful  hill- 
side was  included.  Near  Farrabesche's  cottage  the  valley 
grew  narrower  and  narrower,  till  it  closed  in  as  a  gully  scarce 
a  hundred  feet  across. 

The  beauty  of  the  view  over  which  Mme.  Graslin's  eyes 
wandered,  heedlessly  at  first,  soon  recalled  her  to  herself. 
She  went  back  to  the  cottage,  where  the  father  and  son  were 
standing  in  silence,  making  no  attempt  to  explain  the  strange 
departure  of  their  mistress.  Veronique  looked  at  the  house. 
It  was  more  solidly  built  than  the  thatched  roof  had  led  her 
to  suppose ;  doubtless  it  had  been  left  to  go  to  ruin  at  the  time 
when  the  Navarreins  ceased  to  trouble  themselves  about  the 
estate.  No  sport,  no  gamekeepers.  But  though  no  one  had 
lived  in  it  for  a  century,  the  walls  held  good  in  spite  of  the 
ivy  and  climbing  plants  which  clung  about  them  on  every  side. 
Farrabesche  himself  had  thatched  the  roof  when  he  received 
permission  to  live  there;  he  had  laid  the  stone  flags  on  the 
floor,  -nd  brought  in  such  furniture  as  there  was. 

V6-  mique  went  inside  the  cottage.  Two  beds,  such  as  the 
peasants  use,  met  her  eyes;  there  was  a  large  cupboard  of 


160  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

walnut  wood,  a  hutch  for  bread,  a  dresser,  a  table,  three 
chairs,  a  few  brown  earthen  platters  on  the  shelves  of  the 
dresser;  in  fact,  all  the  necessary  household  gear.  A  couple 
of  guns  and  a  game-bag  hung  above  the  mantelshelf.  It  went 
to  Veronique's  heart  to  see  how  many  things  the  father  had 
made  for  the  little  one ;  there  was  a  toy  man-of-war,  a  fishing 
smack,  and  a  carved  wooden  cup,  a  chest  wonderfully  orna- 
mented, a  little  box  decorated  with  mosaic  work  in  straw,  a 
beautifully-wrought  crucifix  and  rosary.  The  rosary  was  made 
of  plum-stones;  on  each  a  head  had  been  carved  with  won- 
derful skill — Jesus  Christ,  the  Apostles,  the  Madonna,  St. 
John  the  Baptist,  St.  Anne,  the  two  Magdalens. 

"I  did  it  to  amuse  the  child  during  the  long  winter 
evenings,"  he  said,  with  something  of  apology  in  his  tone. 

Jessamine  and  climbing  roses  covered  the  front  of  the 
house,  and  broke  into  blossom  about  the  upper  windows. 
Farrabesche  used  the  first  floor  as  a  storeroom ;  he  kept  poul- 
try, ducks,  and  a  couple  of  pigs,  and  bought  nothing  but 
bread,  salt,  sugar,  and  such  groceries  as  they  needed.  Neither 
he  nor  the  lad  drank  wine. 

"Everything  that  I  have  seen  and  heard  of  you,"  Mme. 
Graslin  said  at  last,  turning  to  Farrabesche,  "has  led  me 
to  take  an  interest  in  you  which  shall  not  come  to  nothing." 

"This  is  M.  Bonnet's  doing,  I  know  right  well !"  cried 
Farrabesche  with  touching  fervor. 

"You  are  mistaken ;  M.  le  Cure  has  said  nothing  to  me  of 
you  as  yet;  chance  or  God,  it  may  be,  has  brought  it  all 
about." 

"Yes,  madame,  it  is  God's  doing ;  God  alone  can  work  won- 
ders for  such  a  wretch  as  I." 

"If  your  life  has  been  a  wretched  one,"  said  Mme.  Graslm, 
in  tones  so  low  that  they  did  not  reach  the  boy  (a  piece  of 
womanly  feeling  which  touched  Farrabesche),  "your  repent- 
ance, your  conduct,  and  M.  Bonnet's  good  opinion  should  go 
far  to  retrieve  it.  I  have  given  orders  that  the  buildings  on 
the  large  farm  near  the  chateau  which  M.  Graslin  panned 
are  to  be  finished;  you  shall  be  my  steward  there;  you  will 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  161 

find  scope  for  your  energies  and  employment  for  your  son. 
The  public  prosecutor  at  Limoges  shall  be  informed  of  your 
case,  and  I  will  engage  that  the  humiliating  restrictions  which 
make  your  life  a  burden  to  you  shall  be  removed/' 

Farrabesche  dropped  down  on  his  knees  as  if  thunderstruck 
at  the  words  which  opened  out  a  prospect  of  the  realization 
of  hopes  hitherto  cherished  in  vain.  He  kissed  the  hem  of 
Mme.  Graslin's  riding  habit;  he  kissed  her  feet.  Benjamin 
saw  the  tears  in  his  father's  eyes,  and  began  to  sob  without 
knowing  why. 

"Do  not  kneel,  Farrabesche,"  said  Mme.  Graslin;  "you  do 
not  know  how  natural  it  is  that  I  should  do  for  you  these 
things  that  I  have  promised  to  do.  ...  Did  you  not 
plant  those  trees  ?"  she  added,  pointing  to  one  or  two  pitch- 
pines,  Norway  pines,  firs,  and  larches  at  the  base  of  the  arid, 
thirsty  hillside  opposite. 

"Yes,  madame." 

"Then  is  the  soil  better  just  there?" 

"The  water  is  always  wearing  the  rocks  away,  so  there  is 
a  little  light  soil  washed  down  on  to  your  land,  and  I  took  ad- 
vantage of  it,  for  all  the  valley  down  below  the  road  belongs 
to  you;  the  road  is  the  boundary  line." 

"Then  does  a  good  deal  of  water  flow  down  the  length  of 
the  valley?" 

"Oh !  in  a  few  days,  madame,  if  the  weather  sets  in  rainy, 
you  will  maybe  hear  the  roaring  of  the  torrent  over  at  the 
chateau !  but  even  then  it  is  nothing  compared  with  what  it 
will  be  when  the  snow  melts.  All  the  water  from  the  whole 
mountain  side  there  at  the  back  of  your  park  and  gardens 
flows  into  it ;  in  fact,  all  the  streams  hereabouts  flow  down  to 
the  torrent,  and  the  water  comes  down  like  a  deluge.  Luckily 
for  you,  the  tree  roots  on  your  side  of  the  valley  bind  the  soil 
together,  and  the  water  slips  off  the  leaves,  for  the  fallen 
leaves  there  in  autumn  are  like  an  oilcloth  cover  for  the  land, 
or  it  would  be  all  washed  down  into  the  valley  bottom,  and 
the  bed  of  the  torrent  is  so  steep  that  I  doubt  whether  the 
soil  would  stop  there." 


162  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

"What  becomes  of  all  the  water  ?"  asked  Mme.  Graslin. 

Farrabesche  pointed  to  the  gully  which  seemed  to  shut  in 
the  valley  below  his  cottage. 

"It  pours  out  over  a  chalky  bit  of  level  ground  that  sepa- 
rates Limousin  from  the  Correze,  and  there  it  lies  for  several 
months  in  stagnant  green  pools,  sinking  slowly  down  into 
the  soil.  That  is  how  the  common  came  to  be  so  unhealthy 
that  no  one  lives  there,  and  nothing  can  be  done  with  it.  Xo 
kind  of  cattle  will  pasture  on  the  reeds  and  rushes  in  those 
brackish  pools.  Perhaps  there  are  three  thousand  acres  of 
it  altogether ;  it  is  the  common  land  of  three  parishes ;  but  it 
is  just  like  the  plain  of  Montegnac,  you  can  do  nothing  with 
it.  And  down  in  your  plain  there  is  a  certain  amount  of  sand 
and  a  little  soil  among  the  flints,  but  here  there  is  nothing 
but  the  bare  tufa." 

"Send  for  the  horses ;  I  mean  to  see  all  this  for  myself." 

Mme.  Graslin  told  Benjamin  where  she  had  left  Maurice, 
and  the  lad  went  forthwith. 

"They  tell  me  that  you  know  every  yard  of  this  country," 
Mme.  Graslin  continued ;  "can  you  explain  to  me  how  it  hap- 
pens that  no  water  flows  into  the  plain  of  Montegnac  from 
my  side  of  the  ridge?  there  is  not  the  smallest  torrent  there 
even  in  rainy  weather  or  in  the  time  of  the  melting  of  the 
snows." 

"Ah,  madame,"  Farrabesche  answered,  "M.  le  Cure,  who 
is  always  thinking  of  the  prosperity  of  Montegnac,  guessed 
the  cause,  but  had  not  proof  of  it.  Since  you  came  here  he 
told  me  to  mark  the  course  of  every  runnel  in  every  little 
valley.  I  had  been  looking  at  the  lie  of  the  land  yesterday, 
and  was  on  my  way  back  when  I  had  the  honor  of  meeting 
you  at  the  base  of  the  Living  Eock.  I  heard  the  sound  of 
horse  hoofs,  and  I  wanted  to  know  who  was  passing  this  wnv. 
Madame,  M.  Bonnet  is  not  only  a  saint,  he  is  a  man  of  science. 
'Farrabesche,'  said  he  (I  being  at  work  at  the  time  on  the 
road  which  the  commune  finished  up  to  the  chateau  for'you) 
— 'Farrabesche,  if  no  water  from  this  side  of  the  hill  reaches 
the  plain  below,  it  must  be  because  nature  has  some  sort 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  163 

of  drainage  arrangement  for  carrying  it  off  elsewhere.' — Well, 
madame,  the  remark  is  so  simple  that  it  looks  downright  trite, 
as  if  any  child  might  have  made  it.  But  nobody  since  Mon- 
tegnac  was  Montegnac,  neither  great  lords,  nor  stewards,  nor 
keepers,  nor  rich,  nor  poor,  though  the  plain  lay  there  before 
their  eyes  with  nothing  growing  on  it  for  want  of  water,  not 
one  of  them  ever  thought  of  asking  what  became  of  the  water 
in  the  Gabou.  The  stagnant  water  gives  them  the  fever  in 
three  communes,  but  they  never  thought  of  looking  for  the 
remedy ;  and  I  myself  never  dreamed  of  it ;  it  took  a  man  of 
God  to  see  that " 

Farrabesche's  eyes  filled  with  tears  as  he  spoke. 

"The  discoveries  of  men  of  genius  are  all  so  simple,  that 
every  one  thinks  he  could  have  found  them  out,"  said  Mme. 
Graslin;  and  to  herself  she  added,  "But  there  is  this  grand 
thing  about  genius,  that  while  it  is  akin  to  all  others,  no  one 
resembles  it." 

"At  once  I  saw  what  M.  Bonnet  meant,"  Farrabesche  went 
on.  "He  had  not  to  use  a  lot  of  long  words  to  explain  my 
job  to  me.  To  make  the  thing  all  the  queerer,  madame,  all 
the  ridge  above  your  plain  (for  it  all  belongs  to  you)  is  full 
of  pretty  deep  cracks,  ravines,  and  gullies,  and  what  not ;  but 
all  the  water  that  flows  down  all  the  valleys,  clefts,  ravines, 
and  gorges,  every  channel,  in  fact,  empties  itself  into  a  little 
valley  a  few  feet  lower  than  the  level  of  your  plain,  madame. 
I  know  the  cause  of  this  state  of  things  to-day,  and  here  it  is : 
There  is  a  sort  of  embankment  of  rock  (schist, ~M..  Bonnet  calls 
it)  twenty  to  thirty  feet  thick,  which  runs  in  an  unbroken 
line  all  round  the  bases  of  the  hills  between  Montegnac  and 
the  Living  Eock.  The  earth,  being  softer  than  the  stone, 
has  been  worn  away  and  been  hollowed  out ;  so,  naturally,  the 
water  all  flows  round  into  the  Gabou,  eating  its  passage  out  of 
each  valley.  The  trees  and  thickets  and  brushwood  hide  the 
lie  of  the  land;  but  when  you  follow  the  streams  and  track 
their  passage,  it  is  easy  to  convince  yourself  of  the  facts.  In 
this  way  both  hillsides  drain  into  the  Gabou,  all  the  water 
from  this  side  that  we  see,  and  the  other  over  the  ridge  where 


164  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

your  park  lies,  as  well  as  from  the  rocks  opposite.  M.  !e  Cure 
thinks  that  this  state  of  things  would  work  its  own  cure  when 
the  water-courses  on  your  side  of  the  ridge  are  blocked  up 
at  the  mouth  by  the  rocks  and  soil  washed  down  from  above, 
so  that  they  raise  barriers  between  themselves  and  the  Gabou. 
When  that  time  comes  your  plain  will  be  flooded  in  turn  like 
the  common  land  you  are  just  about  to  see ;  but  it  would  take 
hundreds  of  years  to  bring  that  about.  And  besides,  is  it  a 
thing  to  wish  for,  madame?  Suppose  that  your  plain  of 
Mont£gnac  should  not  suck  up  all  the  water,  like  the  common 
land  here,  there  would  be  some  more  standing  pools  there  to 
poison  the  whole  country." 

"So  the  places  M.  le  Cure  pointed  out  to  me  a  few  days  ago, 
where  the  trees  are  still  green,  must  mark  the  natural  chan- 
nels through  which  the  water  flows  down  into  the  Gabou  ?" 

"Yes,  madame.  There  are  three  hills  between  the  Living 
Eock  and  Montegnac,  and  consequently  there  are  three  water- 
courses, and  the  streams  that  flow  down  them,  banked  in  by 
the  schist  barrier,  turn  to  the  Gabou.  That  belt  of  wood  still 
green,  round  the  base  of  the  hills,  looks  as  if  it  were  part 
of  your  plain,  but  it  marks  the  course  of  the  channel  which 
was  there,  as  M.  le  Cure  guessed  it  would  be." 

"The  misfortune  will  soon  turn  to  a  blessing  for  Mon- 
tegnac/' said  Mme.  Graslin,  with  deep  conviction  in  her  tones. 
"And  since  you  have  been  the  first  instrument,  you  shall  share 
in  the  work;  you  shall  find  active  and  willing  workers,  for 
hard  work  and  perseverance  must  make  up  for  the  money 
which  we  lack." 

Mme.  Graslin  had  scarcely  finished  the  sentence  when 
Benjamin  and  Maurice  came  up;  she  caught  at  her  horse's 
bridle,  and,  by  a  gesture,  bade  Farrabesche  mount  Maurice's 
horse. 

"Now  bring  me  to  the  place  where  the  water  drowns  the 
common  land,"  she  said. 

"It  will  be  so  much  the  better  that  you  should  go,  madame, 
eince  that  the  late  M.  Graslin,  acting  on  M.  Bonnet's  advice, 
bought  about  three  hundred  acres  of  land  at  the  mouth  of 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  165 

the  gully  where  the  mud  has  been  deposited  by  the  torrent, 
so  that  over  a  certain  area  there  is  some  depth  of  rich  soil. 
Madame  will  see  the  other  side  of  the  Living  Rock;  there  is 
some  magnificent  timber  there,  and  doubtless  M.  Graslin 
would  have  had  a  farm  on  the  spot.  The  best  situation  would 
be  a  place  where  the  little  stream  that  rises  near  my  house 
sinks  into  the  ground  again;  it  might  be  turned  to  advan- 
tage." 

Farrabesche  led  the  way,  and  Veronique  followed  down 
a  steep  path  towards  a  spot  where  the  two  sides  of  the  gully 
drew  in,  and  then  separated  sharply  to  east  and  west,  as  if 
divided  by  some  earthquake  shock.  The  gully  was  about 
sixty  feet  across.  Tall  grasses  were  growing  among  the  huge 
boulders  in  the  bottom.  On  the  one  side  the  Living  Eock, 
cut  to  the  quick,  stood  up  a  solid  surface  of  granite  without 
the  slightest  flaw  in  it ;  but  the  height  of  the  uncompromising 
rock  wall  was  crowned  with  the  overhanging  roots  of  trees, 
for  the  pines  clutched  the  soil  with  their  branching  roots, 
seeming  to  grasp  the  granite  as  a  bird  clings  to  a  bough ;  but 
on  the  other  side  the  rock  was  yellow  and  sandy,  and  hollowed 
out  by  the  weather;  there  was  no  depth  in  the  caverns,  no 
boldness  in  the  hollows  of  the  soft  crumbling  ochre-tinted 
rock.  A  few  prickly-leaved  plants,  burdocks,  reeds,  and  water- 
plants  at  its  base  were  sufficient  signs  of  a  north  aspect  and 
poor  soil.  Evidently  the  two  ranges,  though  parallel,  and  as 
it  were  blended  at  the  time  of  the  great  cataclysm  which 
changed  the  surface  of  the  globe,  were  composed  of  entirely 
different  materials — an  inexplicable  freak  of  nature,  or  the 
result  of  some  unknown  cause  which  waits  for  genius  to  dis- 
cover it.  In  this  place  the  contrast  between  them  was  most 
strikingly  apparent. 

Veronique  saw  in  front  of  her  a  vast  dry  plateau.  There 
was  no  sign  of  plant-life  anywhere ;  the  chalky  soil  explained 
the  infiltration  of  the  water,  only  a  few  stagnant  pools  re- 
mained here  and  there  where  the  surface  was  incrusted.  To 
the  right  stretched  the  mountains  of  the  Correze,  and  to  the 
left  the  ey^  was  arrested  by  the  huge  mass  of  the  Living 


166  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

Rock,  the  tall  forest  trees  that  clothed  its  sides,  and  two  hun- 
dred acres  of  grass  below  the  forest,  in  strong  contrast  with 
the  ghastly  solitude  about  them. 

"My  son  and  I  made  the  ditch  that  you  see  down  yonder," 
said  Farrabesche;  "you  can  see  it  by  the  line  of  tall  grass; 
it  will  be  connected  shortly  with  the  ditch  that  marks  the  edge 
of  your  forest.  Your  property  is  bounded  on  this  side  by  a 
desert,  for  the  first  village  lies  a  league  away." 

Veronique  galloped  into  the  hideous  plain,  and  her  keeper 
followed.  She  cleared  the  ditch  and  rode  at  full  speed  across 
the  dreary  waste,  seeming  to  take  a  kind  of  wild  delight  in 
the  vast  picture  of  desolation  before  her.  Farrabesche  was 
right.  No  skill,  no  human  power  could  turn  that  soil  to  ac- 
count, the  ground  rang  hollow  beneath  the  horses'  hoofs.  This 
was  the  result  of  the  porous  nature  of  the  tufa,  but  there  were 
cracks  and  fissures  no  less  through  which  the  flood  water  sank 
out  of  sight,  doubtless  to  feed  some  far-off  springs. 

"And  yet  there  are  souls  like  this!"  Veronique  exclaimed 
within  herself  as  she  reined  her  horse,  after  a  quarter  of  an 
hour's  gallop. 

She  mused  a  while  with  the  desert  all  about  her ;  there  was 
no  living  creature,  no  animal,  no  insect;  birds  never  crossed 
the  plateau.  In  the  plain  of  Montegnac  there  were  at  any 
rate  the  flints,  a  little  sandy  or  clayey  soil,  and  crumbled  rock 
to  make  a  thin  crust  of  earth  a  few  inches  deep  as  a  beginning 
for  cultivation;  but  here  the  ungrateful  tufa,  which  had 
ceased  to  be  earth,  and  had  not  become  stone,  wearied  the  eyes 
so  cruelly  that  they  were  absolutely  forced  to  turn  for  relief 
to  the  illimitable  ether  of  space.  Veronique  looked  along  the 
boundary  of  her  forests  and  at  the  meadow  which  her  hus- 
band had  added  to  the  estate,  then  she  went  slowly  back 
towards  the  mouth  of  the  Gabou.  She  came  suddenly  upon 
Farrabesche,  and  found  him  looking  into  a  hole,  which  might 
have  suggested  that  some  one  of  a  speculative  turn  had  been 
probing  this  unlikely  spot,  imagining  that  nature  had  hidden 
some  treasure  there. 

"What  is  it  ?"  asked  Veronique,  noticing  the  deep  sadness 
of  the  expression  on  the  manly  face. 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  187 

"Madame,  I  owe  my  life  to  this  trench  here,  or,  more  prop- 
erly, I  owe  to  it  a  space  for  repentance  and  time  to  redeem 
my  faults  in  the  eyes  of  men " 

The  effect  of  this  explanation  of  life  was  to  nail  Mme. 
Graslin  to  the  spot.  She  reined  in  her  horse. 

"I  used  to  hide  here,  madame.  The  ground  is  so  full  of 
echoes,  that  if  I  laid  my  ear  to  the  earth  I  could  catch 
the  sound  of  the  horses  of  the  gendarmerie  or  the  tramp  of 
soldiers  (an  unmistakable  sound  that!)  more  than  a  league 
away.  Then  I  used  to  escape  by  way  of  the  Gabou.  I  had 
a  horse  ready  in  a  place  there,  and  I  always  put  five  or  six 
leagues  between  myself  and  them  that  were  after  me.  Cath- 
erine used  to  bring  me  food  of  a  night.  If  she  did  not  find 
any  sign  of  me,  I  always  found  bread  and  wine  left  in  a  hole 
covered  over  by  a  stone." 

These  recollections  of  this  wild  vagrant  life,  possibly  un- 
wholesome recollections  for  Farrabesche,  stirred  Veronique's 
most  indulgent  pity,  but  she  rode  rapidly  on  towards  the 
Gabou,  followed  by  the  keeper.  While  she  scanned  the  gap, 
looking  down  the  long  valley,  so  fertile  on  one  side,  so  for- 
lorn on  the  other,  and  saw,  more  than  a  league  away,  the  hill- 
side ridges,  tier  on  tier,  at  the  back  of  Montegnac,  Farra- 
besche said,  "There  will  be  famous  waterfalls  here  in  a  few 
days." 

"And  by  the  same  day  next  year,  not  a  drop  of  water  will 
ever  pass  that  way  again.  I  am  on  my  own  property  on  either 
side,  so  I  shall  build  a  wall  solid  enough  and  high  enough 
to  keep  the  water  in.  Instead  of  a  valley  which  is  doing  noth- 
ing, I  shall  have  a  lake,  twenty,  thirty,  forty,  or  fifty  feet 
deep,  and  about  a  league  across — a  vast  reservoir  for  the 
irrigation  channels  that  shall  fertilize  the  whole  plain  of 
Montegnac." 

"M.  le  Cure  was  right,  madame,  when  he  told  us,  as  we 
were  finishing  your  road,  that  we  were  working  for  our 
mother;  may  God  give  His  blessing  to  such  an  enterprise." 

"Say  nothing  about  it,  Farrabesche,"  said  Mme.  Graslin; 
"it  is  M.  Bonnet's  idea." 


168  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

V£ronique  returned  to  Farrabesche's  cottage,  found 
Maurice,  and  went  back  at  once  to  the  chateau.  Her  mother 
and  Aline  were  surprised  at  the  change  in  her  face ;  the  hope 
of  doing  good  to  the  country  had  given  it  a  look  of  something 
like  happiness.  Mme.  Graslin  wrote  to  M.  Grossetete;  she 
wanted  him  to  ask  M.  de  Granville  for  complete  liberty  for 
the  poor  convict,  giving  particulars  as  to  his  good  conduct, 
which  was  further  vouched  for  by  the  mayor's  certificate  and 
a  letter  from  M.  Bonnet.  She  also  sent  other  particulars 
concerning  Catherine  Curieux,  and  entreated  Grossetete  to  in- 
terest the  public  prosecutor  in  her  kindly  project,  and  to 
cause  a  letter  to  be  written  to  the  prefecture  of  police  in  Paris 
with  a  view  to  discovering  the  girl.  The  mere  fact  that  Cath- 
erine had  remitted  sums  of  money  to  the  convict  in  prison 
should  be  a  sufficient  clue  by  which  to  trace  her.  Veronique 
had  set  her  heart  on  knowing  the  reason  why  Catherine  had 
failed  to  come  back  to  her  child  and  to  Farrabesche.  Then 
she  told  her  old  friend  of  her  discoveries  in  the  torrent-bed 
of  the  Gabou,  and  laid  stress  on  the  necessity  of  finding  the 
clever  man  for  whom  she  had  already  asked  him. 

The  next  day  was  Sunday.  For  the  first  time  since  Vero- 
nique took  up  her  abode  in  Montegnac,  she  felt  able  to  go  to 
church  for  mass.  She  went  and  took  possession  of  her  pew 
in  the  Lady  Chapel.  Looking  round  her,  she  saw  how  bare 
the  poverty-stricken  church  was,  and  determined  to  set  by  a 
certain  sum  every  year  for  repairs  and  the  decoration  of  the 
altars.  She  heard  the  words  of  the  priest,  tender,  gracious, 
and  divine;  for  the  sermon,  couched  in  such  simple  lan- 
guage that  all  present  could  understand  it,  was  in  truth  sub- 
lime. The  sublime  comes  from  the  heart;  it  is  not  to  be 
found  by  effort  of  the  intellect;  and  religion  is  an  inexhaust- 
ible source  of  sublime  thoughts  with  no  false  glitter  of  brill- 
iance, for  the  Catholicism  which  penetrates  and  changes 
hearts  is  wholly  of  the  heart.  M.  Bonnet  found  in  the  epistle 
a  text  for  his  sermon,  to  the  effect  that  soon  or  late  God 
fulfils  His  promises,  watches  over  His  own,  and  encourages 
the  good.  He  made  it  clear  that  great  things  would  be  the 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  169 

result  of  the  presence  of  a  rich  and  charitable  resident  in  the 
parish,  by  pointing  out  that  the  duties  of  the  poor  towards 
the  beneficent  rich  were  as  extensive  as  those  of  the  rich  to- 
wards the  poor,  and  that  the  relation  should  be  one  of  mutual 
help. 

Farrabesche  had  spoken  to  some  of  those  who  were  glad  to 
see  him  (one  consequence  of  the  spirit  of  Christian  charity 
which  M.  Bonnet  had  infused  into  practical  action  in  his 
parish),  and  had  told  them  of  Mme.  Graslin's  kindness  to 
him.  All  the  commune  had  talked  this  over  in  the  square 
below  the  church,  where,  according  to  country  custom, 
they  gathered  together  before  mass.  Nothing  could  more 
completely  have  won  the  goodwill  of  these  folk,  who  are  so 
readily  touched  by  any  kindness  shown  to  them;  and  when 
Veronique  came  out  of  church,  she  found  almost  all  the 
parish  standing  in  a  double  row.  All  hats  went  off  respect- 
fully and  in  deep  silence  as  she  passed.  This  welcome 
touched  her,  though  she  did  not  know  the  real  reason  of  it. 
Among  the  last  of  all  she  saw  Farrabesche,  and  spoke  to 
him. 

"You  are  a  good  sportsman ;  do  not  forget  to  send  us  some 
game." 

A  few  days  after  this  Veronique  walked  with  the  cure  in 
that  part  of  the  forest  nearest  her  chateau;  she  determined 
to  descend  the  ridges  which  she  had  seen  from  the  Living 
Eock,  ranged  tier  on  tier  on  the  other  side  of  the  hill.  With 
the  cure's  assistance,  she  would  ascertain  the  exact  position 
of  the  higher  affluents  of  the  Gabou.  The  result  was  the 
discovery  by  the  cure  of  the  fact  that  the  streams  which  water 
Upper  Montegnac  really  rose  in  the  mountains  of  the  Cor- 
reze.  These  ranges  were  united  to  the  mountain  by  the  arid 
rib  of  hill  which  ran  parallel  to  the  chain  of  the  Living  Rock. 
The  cure  came  back  from  that  walk  with  boyish  glee ;  he  saw, 
with  the  naivete  of  a  poet,  the  prosperity  of  the  village  that 
he  loved.  And  what  is  a  poet  but  a  man  who  realizes  his 
dreams  before  the  time?  M.  Bonnet  reaped  his  harvests  as 
he  looked  down  from  the  terrace  at  the  barren  plain. 


170  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

Farrabesche  and  his  son  came  up  to  the  chateau  next  morn- 
ing loaded  with  game.  The  keeper  had  brought  a  cup  for 
Francis  Graslin;  it  was  nothing  less  than  a  masterpiece — a 
battle  scene  carved  on  a  cocoanut  shell.  Mme.  Graslin  hap- 
pened to  be  walking  on  the  terrace,  on  the  side  that  overlooked 
"Tascherons."  She  sat  down  on  a  garden  seat,  and  looked 
long  at  that  fairy's  work.  Tears  came  into  her  eyes  from  time 
to  time. 

"You  must  have  been  very  unhappy,"  she  said,  addressing 
Farrabesche  after  a  silence. 

"What  could  I  do,  madame?"  he  answered.  "I  was  there 
without  the  hope  of  escape,  which  makes  life  bearable  to  al- 
most all  the  convicts " 

"It  is  an  appalling  life !"  she  said,  and  her  look  and  com- 
passionate tones  invited  Farrabesche  to  speak. 

In  Mme.  Graslin's  convulsive  tremor  and  evident  emotion 
Farrabesche  saw  nothing  but  the  overwrought  interest  ex- 
cited by  pitying  curiosity.  Just  at  that  moment  Mme. 
Sauviat  appeared  in  one  of  the  garden  walks,  and  seemed 
about  to  join  them,  but  Yeronique  drew  out  her  handkerchief 
and  motioned  her  away.  "Let  me  be,  mother,"  she  cried,  in 
sharper  tones  than  she  had  ever  before  used  to  the  old  Au- 
vergnate. 

"For  five  years  I  wore  a  chain  riveted  here  to  a  heavy  iron 
ring,  madame,"  Farrabesche  said,  pointing  to  his  leg.  "I  was 
fastened  to  another  man.  I  have  had  to  live  like  that  with 
three  convicts  first  and  last.  I  used  to  lie  on  a  wooden  camp 
bedstead,  and  I  had  to  work  uncommonly  hard  to  get  a  thin 
mattress,  called  a  serpentin.  There  were  eight  hundred  men 
in  each  ward.  Each  of  the  beds  (tolards,  they  called  them) 
held  twenty-four  men,  all  chained  together  two  and  two,  and 
nights  and  mornings  they  passed  a  long  chain  called  the 
'bilboes  string/  in  and  out  of  the  chains  that  bound  each 
couple  together,  and  made  it  fast  to  the  tolard,  so  that  all 
of  us  were  fastened  down  by  the  feet.  Even  after  a  couple 
of  years  of  it,  I  could  not  get  used  to  the  clank  of  those 
chains;  every  moment  they  said,  'You  are  in  a  convicts' 


.THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  171 

prison !'  If  you  dropped  off  to  sleep  for  a  minute,  some 
rogue  or  other  would  begin  to  wrangle  or  turn  himself  round, 
and  put  you  in  mind  of  your  plight.  You  had  to  serve  an 
apprenticeship  to  learn  how  to  sleep.  I  could  not  sleep  at 
all,  in  fact,  unless  I  was  utterly  exhausted  with  a  heavy 
day's  work. 

"After  I  managed  to  sleep,  I  had,  at  any  rate,  the  night 
when  I  could  forget  things.  Forgetfulness — that  is  some- 
thing, madame!  Once  a  man  is  there,  he  must  learn  to 
satisfy  his  needs  after  a  manner  fixed  by  the  most  pitiless 
rules.  You  can  judge,  madame,  what  sort  of  effect  this  life 
was  like  to  have  on  me,  a  young 'fellow  who  had  always  lived 
in  the  woods,  like  the  wild  goats  and  the  birds  !  Ah !  if  I  had 
not  eaten  my  bread  cooped  up  in  the  four  walls  of  a  prison 
for  six  months  beforehand,  I  should  have  thrown  myself  into 
the  sea  at  the  sight  of  my  mates,  for  all  the  beautiful 
things  M.  Bonnet  said,  and  (I  may  say  it)  he  has  been  the 
father  of  my  soul.  I  did  pretty  well  in  the  open  air;  but 
when  once  I  was  shut  up  in  the  ward  to  sleep  or  eat  (for  we 
ate  our  food  there  out  of  troughs,  three  couples  to  each 
trough),  it  took  all  the  life  out  of  me;  the  dreadful  faces  and 
the  language  of  the  others  always  sickened  me.  Luckily, 
at  five  o'clock  in  the  summer,  and  half-past  seven  in  winter, 
out  we  went  in  spite  of  heat  or  cold  or  wind  or  rain,  in  the 
'jail  gang' — that  means  to  work.  So  we  were  out  of  doors 
most  of  our  time,  and  the  open  air  seems  very  good  to  you 
when  you  come  out  of  a  place  where  eight  hundred  convicts 
herd  together.  .  .  .  The  air,  you  must  always  remember, 
is  sea  air !  You  enjoy  the  breeze,  the  sun  is  like  a  friend,  and 
you  watch  the  clouds  pass  over,  and  look  for  hopeful  signs 
of  a  beautiful  day.  For  my  own  part,  I  took  an  interest  in 
my  work." 

Farrabesche  stopped,  for  two  great  tears  rolled  down  Vero- 
niqne's  cheeks. 

"Oh !  madame,  these  are  only  the  roses  of  that  existence !" 
he  cried,  taking  the  expression  on  Mme.  Graslin's  face  for 
pity  of  his  lot.  "There  are  the  dreadful  precautions  the  Gov- 


172  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

eminent  takes  to  make  sure  of  us,  the  inquisition  kept  up  by 
the  warders,  the  inspection  of  fetters  morning  and  evening, 
the  coarse  food,  the  hideous  clothes  that  humiliate  you  at 
every  moment,  the  constrained  position  while  you  sleep,  the 
frightful  sound  of  four  hundred  double  chains  clanking  in  an 
echoing  ward,  the  prospect  of  being  mowed  down  with  grape- 
shot  if  half-a-dozen  scoundrels  take  it  into  their  heads  to 
rebel, — all  these  horrible  things  are  nothing,  they  are  the 
roses  of  that  life,  as  I  said  before.  Any  respectable  man  un- 
lucky enough  to  be  sent  there  must  die  of  disgust  before  very 
long.  You  have  to  live  day  and  night  with  another  convict; 
you  have  to  endure  the  company  of  five  more  at  every  meal, 
and  twenty-three  at  night ;  you  have  to  listen  to  their  talk. 

"The  convicts  have  secret  laws  among  themselves,  madame ; 
if  you  make  an  outlaw  of  yourself,  they  will  murder  you; 
if  you  submit,  you  become  a  murderer.  You  have  your  choice 
— you  must  be  either  victim  or  executioner.  After  all,  if 
you  die  at  a  blow,  that  would  put  an  end  to  you  and  your 
troubles;  but  they  are  too  cunning  in  wickedness,  it  is  im- 
possible to  hold  out  against  their  hatred :  any  one  whom  they 
dislike  is  completely  at  their  mercy,  they  can  make  every 
moment  of  his  life,  one  constant  torture  worse  than  death. 
Any  man  who  repents  and  tries  to  behave  well  is  the  common 
enemy,  and  more  particularly  they  suspect  him  of  tale-tell- 
ing. They  will  take  a  man's  life  on  a  mere  suspicion  of  tale- 
telling.  Every  ward  has  its  tribunal,  where  they  try  crimes 
against  the  convicts'  laws.  It  is  an  offence  not  to  conform  to 
their  customs,  and  a  man  may  be  punished  for  that.  For 
instance,  everybody  is  bound  to  help  the  escape  of  a  convict ; 
'every  convict  has  his  chance  of  escape  in  turn,  when  the 
whole  prison  is  bound  to  give  him  help  and  protection.  -It  is 
a  crime  to  reveal  anything  done  by  a  convict  to  further  his 
escape.  I  will  not  speak  of  the  horrible  moral  tone  of  the 
prison ;  strictly  speaking,  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  sub- 
ject. The  prison  authorities  chain  men  of  opposite  disposi- 
tions together,  so  as  to  neutralize  any  attempt  at  escape  or  re- 
bellion; and  always  put  those  who  either  could  not  endure 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  173 

each  other,  or  were  suspicious  of  each  other,  on  the  same 
chain." 

"What  did  you  do  ?"  asked  Mme.  Graslin. 

"Oh !  it  was  like  this,  I  had  luck,"  said  Farrabesche ;  "the 
lot  never  fell  to  me  to  kill  a  doomed  man,  I  never  voted  the 
death  of  anybody,  no  matter  whom,  I  was  never  punished, 
no  one  took  a  dislike  to  me,  and  I  lived  comfortably  with 
the  three  mates  they  gave  me  one  after  another — all  three  of 
them  feared  and  liked  me.  But  then  I  was  well  known  in  the 
prison  before  I  got  there,,  madame.  A  chauffeur!  for  I  was 
supposed  to  be  one  of  those  brigands  ...  I  have  seen 
them  do  it,"  Farrabesche  went  on  in  a  low  voice,  after  a 
pause,  "but  I  never  would  help  to  torture  folk,  nor  take  any 
of  the  stolen  money.  I  was  a  'refractory  conscript/  that  was 
all.  I  used  to  help  the  rest,  I  was  scout  for  them,  I  fought,  I 
was  forlorn  sentinel,  rearguard,  what  you  will,  but  I  never 
shed  blood  except  in  self-defence.  Oh !  I  told  M.  Bonnet  and 
my  lawyer  everything,  and  the  judges  knew  quite  well  that  I 
was  not  a  murderer.  But,  all  the.  same,  I  am  a  great  criminal ; 
the  things  that  I  have  done  are  all  against  the  law. 

"Two  of  my  old  comrades  had  told  them  about  me  before 
I  came.  I  was  a  man  of  whom  the  greatest  things  might  be 
expected,  they  said.  In  the  convicts'  prison,  you  see, 
madame,  there  is  nothing  like  a  character  of  that  kind;  it  is 
worth  even  more  than  money.  A  murder  is  a  passport  in  this 
republic  of  wretchedness;  they  leave  you  in  peace.  I  did 
nothing  to  destroy  their  opinion  of  me,  I  looked  gloomy 
and  resigned;  it  was  possible  to  be  misled  by  my  face,  and 
they  were  misled.  My  sullen  manner  and  my  silence  were 
taken  for  signs  of  ferocity.  Every  one  there,  convicts  and 
warders,  young  and  old,  respected  me.  I  was  president  of 
my  ward.  I  was  never  tormented  at  night,  nor  suspected  of 
tale-telling.  I  lived  honestly  according  to  their  rules;  I 
never  refused  to  do  any  one  a  good  turn;  I  never  showed  a 
sign  of  disgust;  in  short,  I  'howled  with  the  wolves,'  to  all 
appearance,  and  in  my  secret  soul  I  prayed  to  God.  My  last 
mate  was  a  soldier,  a  lad  of  two-and-twenty,  who  had  stolen 


174  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

something,  and  then  deserted  in  consequence;  I  had  him  for 
four  years.  We  were  friends,  and  wherever  I  may  be  I  can 
reckon  on  him  when  he  comes  out.  The  poor  wretch,  Guepin 
they  called  him,  was  not  a  rascal,  he  was  only  a  hare-brained 
boy ;  his  ten  years  will  sober  him  down.  Oh !  if  the  rest  had 
known  that  it  was  religion  that  reconciled  me  to  my  fate; 
that  when  my  time  was  up  I  meant  to  live  in  some  corner 
without  letting  them  know  where  I  was,  to  forget  those  fear- 
ful creatures,  and  never  to  be  in  the  way  of  meeting  one  of 
them  again,  they  would  very  likely  have  driven  me  mad." 

"But,  then,  suppose  that  some  unhappy,  sensitive  boy  had 
been  carried  away  by  passion,  and — pardoned  so  far  as  the 
death  penalty  is  concerned ?" 

"Madame,  a  murderer  is  never  fully  pardoned.  They  begin 
by  commuting  the  sentence  for  twenty  years  of  penal  servi- 
tude. But  for  a  decent  young  fellow  it  is  a  thing  to  shudder 
at !  It  is  impossible  to  tell  you  about  the  life  in  store  for 
him;  it  would  be  a  hundred  times  better  for  him  that  he 
should  die!  Yes,  for  such  a  death  on  the  scaffold  is  good 
fortune." 

"I  did  not  dare  to  think  it,"  said  Mme.  Graslin. 

Veronique  had  grown  white  as  wax.  She  leant  her  fore- 
head against  the  balustrade  to  hide  her  face  for  several  mo- 
ments. Farrabesche  did  not  know  whether  he  ought  to  go 
or  stay.  Then  Mme.  Graslin  rose  to  her  feet,  and  with  an 
almost  queenly  look  she  said,  to  Farrabesche's  great  astonish- 
ment, "Thank  you,  my  friend !"  in  tones  that  went  to  his 
heart.  Then  after  a  pause — "Where  did  you  draw  courage 
to  live  and  suffer  as  you  did  ?"  she  asked. 

"Ah,  madame,  M.  Bonnet  had  set  a  treasure  in  my  soul ! 
That  is  why  I  love  him  more  than  I  have  ever  loved  any  one 
else  in  this  world." 

"More  than  Catherine?"  asked  Mme.  Graslin,  with  a  cer- 
tain bitterness  in  her  smile. 

"Ah,  madame,  almost  as  much." 

"How  did  he  do  it  ?" 

"Madame,  the  things  that  he  said  and  the  tones  of  his 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  175 

voice  subdued  me.  It  was  Catherine  who  showed  him  the 
way  to  the  hiding-place  in  the  chalk-land  which  I  showed  you 
the  other  day.  He  came  to  me  quite  alone.  He  was  the  new 
cure  of  Montegnac,  he  told  me;  I  was  his  parishioner,  I  was 
dear  to  him,  he  knew  that  I  had  only  strayed  from  the  path, 
that  I  was  not  yet  lost ;  he  did  not  mean  to  betray  me,  but  to 
save  me;  in  fact,  he  said  things  that  thrill  you  to  the  very 
depths  of  your  nature.  And  you  see,  madame,  he  can  make 
you  do  right  with  all  the  force  that  other  people  take  to  make 
you  do  wrong.  He  told  me,  poor  dear  man,  that  Cath- 
erine was  a  mother;  I  was  about  to  give  over  two  creatures 
to  shame  and  neglect.  'Very  well/  said  I,  'then  they  will  be 
just  as  I  am ;  I  have  no  future  before  me.'  He  answered  that 
I  had  two  futures  before  me,  and  both  of  them  bad — one  in 
this  world,  the  other  in  the  next — unless  I  desisted  and  re- 
formed. Here  below  I  was  bound  to  die  on  the  scaffold.  If 
I  were  caught,  my  defence  would  break  down  in  a  court  of 
law.  On  the  other  hand,  if  I  took  advantage  of  the  mildness 
of  the  new  Government  towards  'refractory  conscripts'  of 
many  years'  standing,  and  gave  myself  up,  he  would  strain 
every  nerve  to  save  my  life.  He  would  find  me  a  clever  advo- 
cate who  would  pull  me  through  with  ten  years'  penal  servi- 
tude. After  that  M.  Bonnet  talked  to  me  of  another  life. 
Catherine  cried  like  a  Magdalen  at  that.  There,  madame," 
said  Farrabesche,  holding  out  his  right  hand,  "she  laid  her 
face  against  this,  and  I  felt  it  quite  wet  with  her  tears.  She 
prayed  me  to  live !  M.  le  Cure  promised  to  contrive  a  quiet 
and  happy  lot  for  me  and  for  my  child,  even  in  this  district, 
and  undertook  that  no  one  should  cast  up  the  past  to  me.  In 
short,  he  lectured  me  as  if  I  had  been  a  little  boy.  After  three 
of  those  nightly  visits  I  was  as  p^ant  as  a  glove.  Do  you  care 
to  know  why,  madame?" 

Farrabesche  and  Mme.  Graslin  looked  at  each  other,  and 
neither  of  them  to  their  secret  souls  explained  the  real  mo- 
tive of  their  mutual  curiosity. 

''Very  well,"  the  poor  ticket-of-leave  man  continued,  "the 
first  time  when  he  had  gone  away,  and  Catherine  wenr,  too, 


176  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

to  show  him  the  way  back,  and  I  was  left  alone,  I  felt  a  kind 
of  freshness  and  calm  and  happiness  such  as  I  had  not  known 
since  I  was  a  child.  It  was  something  like  the  happiness  I 
had  felt  with  poor  Catherine.  The  love  of  this  dear  man, 
who  had  come  to  seek  me  out,  the -interest  that  he  took  in 
me,  in  my  future,  in  my  soul — it  all  worked  upon  me  and 
changed  me.  It  was  as  if  a  light  arose  in  me.  So  long  as 
he  was  with  me  and  talked,  I  held  out.  How  could  I  help  it  ? 
He  was  a  priest,  and  we  bandits  do  not  eat  their  bread.  But 
when  the  sound  of  his  footsteps  and  Catherine's  died  away — 
oh !  I  was,  as  he  said  two  days  later,  'enlightened  by  grace.' 

"From  that  time  forwards,  God  gave  me  strength  to  endure 
everything — the  jail,  the  sentence,  the  putting  on  of  the 
irons,  the  journey,  the  life  in  the  convicts'  prison.  I  reckoned 
upon  M.  Bonnet's  promise  as  upon  the  truth  of  the  Gospel ; 
I  looked  on  my  sufferings  as  a  payment  of  arrears.  Whenever 
things  grew  unbearable,  I  used  to  see,  at  the  end  of  the  ten 
years,  this  house  in  the  woods,  and  my  little  Benjamin  and 
Catherine  there.  Good  M.  Bonnet,  he  kept  his  promise;  but 
some  one  else  failed  me.  Catherine  was  not  at  the  prison 
door  when  I  came  out,  nor  yet  at  the  trysting  place  en  the 
common  lands.  She  must  have  died  of  grief.  That  is  why 
I  am  always  sad.  Now,  thanks  to  you,  madame,  I  shall  hare 
work  to  do  that  needs  doing;  I  shall  put  myself  into  K  body 
and  soul,  so  will  my  boy  for  whom  I  live 

"You  have  shown  me  how  it  was  that  M.  le  Cure  could 
bring  about  the  changes  in  his  parish " 

"Oh !  nothing  can  resist  him,"  said  Farrabesche. 

"No,  no.  I  know  that,"  Veronique  answered  briefly,  and 
she  dismissed  Farrabesche  with  a  sign  of  farewell. 

Farrabesche  went.  Most  dof  that  day  Yeronique  spent  in 
pacing  to  and  fro  along  the  terrace,  in  spite  of  the  drizzling 
rain  that  fell  till  evening  came  on.  She  was  gloomy  and  sad. 
When  Yeronique's  brows  were  thus  contracted,  neither  her 
mother  nor  Aline  dared  to  break  in  on  her  mood  ;  she  did  not 
Bee  her  mother  talking  in  the  dusk  with  M.  Bonnot,  who, 
seeing  that  she  must  be  roused  from  this  appalling  dejection* 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  177 

the  child  to  find  her.  Little  Francis  went  up  to  his 
mother  and  took  her  hand,  and  Veronique  suffered  herself 
to  be  led  away.  At  the  sight  of  M.  Bonnet  she  started  with 
something  almost  like  dismay.  The  cure  led  the  way  back 
to  the  terrace. 

"Well,  madame,"  he  said,  "what  can  you  have  been  talking 
about  with  Farrabesche  ?" 

Veronique  did  not  wish  to  lie  nor  to  answer  the  question; 
she  replied  to  it  by  another : 

"Was  he  your  first  victory  ?" 

"Yes,"  said  M.  Bonnet.  "If  I  could  win  him,  I  felt  sure 
of  Montegnac;  and  so  it  proved." 

Veronique  pressed  M.  Bonnet's  hand. 

"From  to-day  I  am  your  penitent,  M.  le  Cure,"  she  said, 
with  tears  in  her  voice;  "to-morrow  I  will  make  you  a 
general  confession." 

The  last  words  plainly  spoke  of  a  great  inward  struggle 
and  a  hardly  won  victory  over  herself.  The  cure  led  the 
way  back  to  the  chateau  without  a  word,  and  stayed  with  her 
till  dinner,  talking  over  the  vast  improvements  to  be  made 
in  Montegnac. 

"Agriculture  is  a  question  of  time,"  he  said.  "The  little 
that  I  know  about  it  has  made  me  to  understand  how  much 
may  be  done  by  a  well-spent  winter.  Here  are  the  rains  be- 
ginning, you  see;  before  long  the  mountains  will  be  covered 
with  snow,  and  your  operations  will  be  impossible;  so  hurry 
M.  Grossetete." 

M.  Bonnet  exerted  himself  to  talk,  and  drew  Mme.  Graslin 
into  the  conversation;  gradually  her  thoughts  were  forced  to 
take  another  turn,  and  by  the  time  he  left  her  she  had  almost 
recovered  from  the  day's  excitement.  But  even  so,  Mme. 
Sauviat  saw  that  her  daughter  was  so  terribly  agitated  that 
she  spent  the  night  with  her. 

Two  days  later  a  messenger  sent  by  M.  Grossetete  arrived 
with  the  following  letters  for  Mme.  Graslin : — 


178  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

Grossetete  to  Mme.  Oraslin. 

"MY  DEAR  CHILD, — Horses  are  not  easily  to  be  found,  but 
I  hope  that  you  are  satisfied  with  the  three  which  I  sent  you. 
If  you  need  draught-horses,  or  plow-horses,  they  must  be 
looked  for  elsewhere.  It  is  better  in  any  case  to  use  oxen 
for  plowing  and  as  draught  animals.  In  all  districts  where 
they  use  horses  on  the  land,  they  lose  their  capital  as  soon  as 
the  animal  is  past  work,  while  an  ox,  instead  of  being  a  loss, 
yields  a  profit  to  the  farmer. 

"I  approve  your  enterprise  in  every  respect,  my  child; 
you  will  find  in  it  an  outlet  for  the  devouring  mental  energy 
which  was  turned  against  yourself  and  wearing  you  out.  But 
when  you  ask  me  to  find  you,  over  and  above  the  horses,  a 
man  able  to  second  you,  and  more  particularly  to  enter  into 
your  views,  you  ask  me  for  one  of  those  rare  birds  that  we 
rear,  it  is  true,  in  the  provinces,  but  which  we  in  no  case 
keep  among  us.  The  training  of  the  noble  animal  is  too 
lengthy  and  too  risky  a  speculation  for  us  to  undertake,  and 
besides,  we  are  afraid  of  these  very  clever  folk — 'eccentrics,' 
we  call  them. 

"As  a  matter  of  fact,  too,  the  men  who  are  classed  in  the 
scientific  category  in  which  you  are  fain  to  find  a  co-op- 
erator are,  as  a  rule,  so  prudent  and  so  well  provided  for,  that 
I  hardly  liked  to  write  to  tell  you  how  impossible  it  would 
be  to  come  by  such  a  prize.  You  asked  me  for  a  poet,  or,  if 
you  prefer  it,  a  madman;  but  all  our  madmen  betake  them- 
selves to  Paris.  I  did  speak  to  one  or  two  young  fellows  en- 
gaged on  the  land  survey  and  assessments,  contractors  for  em- 
bankments, or  foremen  employed  on  canal  cuttings ;  but  none 
of  them  thought  it  worth  their  while  to  entertain  your  pro- 
posals. Chance  all  at  once  threw  in  my  way  the  very  man  you 
want,  a  young  man  whom  I  thought  to  help ;  for  you  will  see 
by  his  letter  that  one  ought  not  to  set  about  doing  a  kindness 
in  a  happy-go-lucky  fashion,  and,  indeed,  an  act  of  kindness 
requires  more  thinking  about  than  anything  else  on  this 
earth.  You  can  never  tell  whether  what  seemed  to  you  to 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  179 

be  right  at  the  time  may  not  do  harm  by  and  by.    By  help- 
ing others  we  shape  our  own  destinies ;  I  see  that  now " 

As  Mme.  Graslin  read  those  words,  the  letter  dropped  from 
her  hands.  For  some  moments  she  sat  deep  in  thought. 

"Oh,  God,"  she  cried,  "when  wilt  Thou  cease  to  smite  me 
by  every  man's  hand  ?" 

Then  she  picked  up  the  letters  and  read  on  : 

"Gerard  seems  to  me  to  have  plenty  of  enthusiasm  and 
a  cool  head ;  the  very  man  for  you !  Paris  is  in  a  ferment 
just  now  with  this  leaven  of  new  doctrine,  and  I  shall  be  de- 
lighted if  the  young  fellow  keeps  out  of  the  snares  spread  by 
ambitious  spirits,  who  work  upon  the  instincts  of  the  generous 
youth  of  France.  The  rather  torpid  existence  of  the  provinces 
is  not  altogether  what  I  like  for  him,  but  neither  do  I  like 
the  idea  of  the  excitement  of  the  life  in  Paris,  and  the  en- 
thusiasm for  renovating,  which  urges  youngsters  into  the 
new  ways.  You,  and  you  only,  know  my  opinions;  to  me  it 
seems  that  the  world  of  ideas  revolves  on  its  axis  much  as  the 
material  world  does.  Here  is  this  poor  protege  of  mine 
wanting  impossibilities.  ISTo  power  on  earth  could  stand  be- 
fore ambitions  so  violent,  imperious,  and  absolute.  I  have 
a  liking  myself  for  a  jog  trot ;  I  like  to  go  slowly  in  politics, 
and  have  but  very  little  taste  for  the  social  topsy-turvydom 
which  all  these  lofty  spirits  are  minded  to  inflict  upon  us.  To 
you  I  confide  the  principles  of  an  old  and  crusted  supporter 
of  the  monarchy,  for  you  are  discreet.  I  hold  my  tongue 
here  among  these  good  folk,  who  believe  more  and  more  in 
progress  the  further  they  get  into  a  mess ;  but  for  all  that,  it 
hurts  me  to  see  the  irreparable  damage  done  already  to  our 
dear  country. 

"So  I  wrote  and  told  the  young  man  that  a  task  worthy 
of  him  was  waiting  for  him  here.  He  is  coming  to  see  you; 
for  though  his  letter  (which  I  enclose)  will  give  you  a  very- 
fair  idea  of  him,  you  would  like  to  see  him  as  well,  would 
you  not?  You  women  can  tell  so  much  from  the  look  of 


180  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

people;  and  besides,  you  ought  not  to  have  any  one,  however 
insignificant,  in  your  service  unless  you  like  him.  If  he  is 
not  the  man  you  want,  you  can  decline  his  services;  but  if 
he  suits  you,  dear  child,  cure  him  of  his  flimsily  disguised 
ambitions,  induce  him  to  adopt  the  happy  and  peaceful  life 
of  the  fields,  a  life  in  which  beneficence  is  perpetual,  where  all 
the  qualities  of  great  and  strong  nature  are  continually 
brought  into  play,  where  the  products  of  Nature  are  a  daily 
source  of  new  wonder,  and  a  man  finds  worthy  occupation  in 
making  a  real  advance  and  practical  improvements.  I  do 
not  in  any  way  overlook  the  fact  that  great  deeds  come  of 
great  ideas — great  theories;  but  as  ideas  of  that  kind  are 
seldom  met  with,  I  think  that,  for  the  most  part,  practical  at- 
tainments are  worth  more  than  ideas.  A  man  who  brings  a 
bit  of  land  into  cultivation,  or  a  tree  or  fruit  to  perfection, 
who  makes  grass  grow  where  grass  would  not  grow  before, 
ranks  a  good  deal  higher  than  the  seeker  after  formulas  for 
humanity.  In  what  has  Newton's  science  changed  the  lot  of 
the  worker  in  the  fields  ?  .  .  .  Ah !  my  dear,  I  loved  you 
before,  but  to-day,  appreciating  to  the  full  the  task  which 
you  have  set  before  you,  I  love  you  far  more.  You  are  not 
forgotten  here  in  Limoges,  and  every  one  admires  your  great 
resolution  of  improving  Montegnac.  Give  us  our  little  due, 
in  that  we  have  the  wit  to  admire  nobility  when  we  see  it, 
and  do  not  forget  that  the  first  of  your  admirers  is  also 
your  earliest  friend. 

"F.  GROSSETETE." 

Gerard  to  Grossetete. 

"I  come  to  you,  monsieur,  with  sad  confidences,  but  you 
have  been  like  a  father  to  me,  when  you  might  have  been 
simply  a  patron.  So  to  you  alone  who  have  made  me  anv- 
thing  that  I  am,  can  I  make  them.  I  have  fallen  a  victim 
to  a  cruel  disease,  a  disease,  moreover,  not  of  the  body;  I  am 
conscious  that  I  ?.m  completely  unfitted  by  my  thoughts,  feel- 
ings, and  opinions,  and  by  the  whole  bent  of  my  mind,  to 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  181 

do  what  is  expected  of  me  by  the  Government  and  hy  so- 
ciety. Perhaps  this  will  seem  to  you  to  be  a  piece  of  ingrati- 
tude, but  it  is  simply  and  solely  an  indictment  that  I  ad- 
dress to  you. 

"When  I  was  twelve  years  old  you  saw  the  signs  of  a  cer- 
tain aptitude  for  the  exact  sciences,  and  a  precocious  am- 
bition to  succeed,  in  a  working-man's  son,  and  it  was  through 
you,  my  generous  godfather,  that  I  took  my  flight  towards 
higher  spheres;  but  for  you  I  should  be  following  out  my 
original  destiny ;  I  should  be  a  carpenter  like  my  poor  father, 
who  did  not  live  to  rejoice  in  my  success.  And  most  surely, 
monsieur,  you  did  me  a  kindness;  there  is  no  day  on  which 
I  do  not  bless  you;  and  so,  perhaps,  it  is  I  who  am  in  the 
wrong.  But  whether  right  or  wrong,  I  am  unhappy;  and 
does  not  the  fact  that  I  pour  out  my  complaints  to  you  set 
you  very  high  ?  Is  it  not  as  if  I  made  of  you  a  supreme  judge, 
like  God  ?  In  any  case,  I  trust  to  your  indulgence. 

"I  studied  the  exact  sciences  so  hard  between  the  ages  of 
sixteen  and  eighteen  that  I  made  myself  ill,  as  you  know. 
My  whole  future  depended  on  my  admission  to  the  ^cole 
polytechnique.  The  work  that  I  did  at  that  time  was  a  dis- 
proportionate training  for  the  intellect ;  I  all  but  killed  my- 
self !  I  studied  day  and  night ;  I  exerted  myself  to  do  more 
than  I  was  perhaps  fit  for.  I  was  determined  to  pass  my  ex- 
aminations so  well  that  I  should  be  sure  not  only  of  admit- 
tance into  the  Ecole,  but  of  a  free  education  there,  for  I 
wanted  to  spare  you  the  expense,  and  I  succeeded ! 

"It  makes  me  shudder  now  to  think  of  that  appalling  con- 
scription of  brains  yearly  made  over  to  the  Government  by 
family  ambition;  a  conscription  which  demands  such  severe 
study  at  a  time  when  a  lad  is  almost  a  man,  and  growing  fast 
in  every  way,  cannot  but  do  incalculable  mischief;  many 
precious  faculties  which  later  would  have  developed  and 
growTi  strong  and  powerful,  are  extinguished  by  the  light  of 
the  student's  lamp.  Nature's  laws  are  inexorable;  they  are 
not  to  be  thrust  aside  by  the  schemes  nor  at  the  pleasure  of 
society;  and  the  laws  of  the  physical  world,  the  laws  which 
'3 


182  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

govern  the  nature  without,  hold  good  no  less  of  human  na- 
ture— every  abuse  must  be  paid  for.  If  you  must  have  fruit 
out  of  season,  you  have  it  from  a  forcing  house  either  at  the 
expense  of  the  tree  or  of  the  quality  of  the  fruit.  La  Quin- 
tinie  killed  the  orange-trees  that  Louis  XIV.  might  have  a 
bouquet  of  orange  blossoms  every  morning  throughout  the 
year.  Any  heavy  demand  made  on  a  still  growing  intellect 
is  a  draft  on  its  future. 

"The  pressing  and  special  need  of  our  age  is  the  spirit  of 
the  lawgiver.  Europe  has  so  far  seen  no  lawgiver  since  Jesus 
Christ ;  and  Christ,  who  gave  us  no  vestige  of  a  political  code, 
left  His  work  incomplete.  For  example,  before  technical 
schools  were  established,  and  the  present  means  of  filling 
them  with  scholars  was  adopted,  did  they  call  in  one  of  the 
great  thinkers  who  hold  in  their  heads  the  immensity  of  the 
sum  of  the  relations  of  the  institution  to  human  brain-power ; 
who  can  balance  the  advantages  and  disadvantages,  and  study 
in  the  past  the  laws  of  the  future?  Was  any  inquiry  made 
into  the  after-lives  of  men  who,  for  their  misfortune,  knew 
the  circle  of  the  sciences  at  too  early  an  age  ?  Was  any  esti- 
mate of  their  rarity  attempted  ?  Was  their  fate  ascertained  ? 
Was  it  discovered  how  they  contrived  to  endure  the  continual 
strain  of  thought  ?  How  many  of  them  died  like  Pascal,  pre- 
maturely, worn  out  by  science  ?  Some,  again,  lived  to  old  age ; 
when  did  these  begin  their  studies  ?  Was  it  known  then,  is  it 
known  now  as  I  write,  what  conformation  of  the  brain  is  best 
fitted  'to  stand  the  strain,  and  to  cope  prematurely  with 
knowledge?  Is  it  so  much  as  suspected  that  this  is  before  all 
things  a  physiological  question? 

"Well,  I  think  myself  that  the  general  rule  is  that  the 
vegetative  period  of  adolescence  should  be  prolonged.  There 
are  exceptions;  there  are  some  so  constituted  that  they  are 
capable  of  this  effort  in  youth,  but  the  result  is  the  shorten- 
ing of  life  in  most  cases.  Clearly  the  man  of  genius  who  can 
stand  the  precocious  exercise  of  his  faculties  is  bound  to  be 
an  exception  among  exceptions.  If  medical  testimony  and 
social  data  bear  me  out,  our  way  of  recruiting  for  the  tech- 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  183 

nical  schools  in  France  works  as  much  havoc  among  the  best 
human  specimens  of  each  generation  as  La  Quintinie's  pro- 
cess among  the  orange-trees. 

"But  to  continue  (for  I  will  append  my  doubts  to  each 
series  of  facts),  I  began  my  work  anew  at  the  Ecole,  and  with 
more  enthusiasm  than  ever.  I  meant  to  leave  it  as  success- 
fully as  I  had  entered  it.  Between  the  ages  of  nineteen  and 
one-and-twenty  I  worked  with  all  my  might,  and  developed 
my  faculties  by  their  constant  exercise.  Those  two  years  set 
the  crown  on  the  three  which  came  before  them,  when  I  was 
only  preparing  to  do  great  things.  And  then,  what  pride  did 
I  not  feel  when  I  had  won  the  privilege  of  choosing  the  career 
most  to  my  mind  ?  I  might  be  a  military  or  marine  engineer, 
might  go  on  the  staff  of  the  Artillery,  into  the  Mines  de- 
partment, or  the  Eoads  and  Bridges.  I  took  your  advice, 
and  became  a  civil  engineer. 

"Yet  where  I  triumphed,  how  many  fell  out  of  the  ranks ! 
You  know  that  from  year  to  year  the  Government  raises  the 
standard  of  the  Ecol'e.  The  work  grows  harder  and  more 
trying  from  time  to  time.  The  course  of  preparatory  study 
through  which  I  went^was  nothing  compared  with  the  work 
at  fever-heat  in  the  Ecole,  to  the  end  that  every  physical 
science — mathematics,  astronomy,  and  chemistry,  and  the 
terminologies  of  each — may  be  packed  into  the  heads  of  so 
many  young  men  between  the  ages  of  nineteen  and  twenty- 
one.  The  Government  here  in  France,  which  in  so  may  ways 
seems  to  aim  at  taking  the  place  of  the  paternal  authority, 
has  in  this  respect  no  bowels — no  father's  pity  for  its  chil- 
dren; it  makes  its  experiments  in  anima  vtti.  The  ugly 
statistics  of  the  mischief  it  has  wrought  have  never  been  asked 
for ;  no  one  has  troubled  to  inquire  how  many  cases  of  brain 
fever  there  have  been  during  the  last  thirty-six  years;  how 
many  explosions  of  despair  among  those  young  lads;  no  one 
takes  account  of  the  moral  destruction  which  decimates  the 
victims.  I  lay  stress  on  this  painful  aspect  of  the  problem, 
because  it  occurs  by  the  way,  and  before  the  final  result;  for 
a  few  weaklings  the  result  comes  soon  instead  of  late.  You 


184  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

know,  besides,  that  these  victims,  whose  minds  work  slowly, 
or  who,  it  may  be,  are  temporarily  stupefied  with  overwork, 
are  allowed  to  stay  for  three  years  instead  of  two  at  the  Ecole, 
but  the  way  these  are  regarded  there  has  no  very  favorable  in- 
fluence on  their  capacity.  In  fact,  it  may  chance  that  young 
men,  who  at  a  later  day  will  show  that  they  have  something 
in  them,  may  leave  the  Ecole  without  an  appointment  at  all, 
because  at  the  final  examination  they  do  not  exhibit  the 
amount  of  knowledge  required  of  them.  These  are  'plucked,' 
as  they  say,  and  Napoleon  used  to  make  sub-lieutenants  of 
them.  In  these  days  the  'plucked'  candidate  represents  a 
vast  loss  of  capital  invested  by  families,  and  a  loss  of  time 
for  the  lad  himself. 

"But,  after  all,  I  myself  succeeded !  At  the  age  of  one- 
and-twenty  I  had  gone  over  all  the  ground  discovered  in 
mathematics  by  men  of  genius,  and  I  was  impatient  to  dis- 
tinguish myself  by  going  further.  The  desire  is  so  natural 
that  almost  every  student  when  he  leaves  the  Ecole  fixes  his 
eyes  on  the  sun  called  glory  in  an  invisible  heaven.  The  first 
thought  in  all  our  minds  was  to  be  a  Newton,  a  Laplace,  or  a 
Vauban.  Such  are  the  efforts  which  France  requires  of 
young  men  who  leave  the  famous  Ecole  polytechnique ! 

"And  now  let  us  see  what  becomes  of  the  men  sorted  and 
sifted  with  such  care  out  of  a  whole  generation.  At  one-and- 
twenty  we  dream  dreams,  a  whole  lifetime  lies  before  us,  we 
expect  wonders.  I  entered  the  Schood  of  Koads  and  Bridges, 
and  became  a  civil  engineer.  I  studied  construction,  and 
with  what  enthusiasm !  You  must  remember  it.  In  1826, 
when  I  left  the  School,  at  the  age  of  twenty-four,  I  was  still 
only  a  civil  engineer  on  my  promotion,  with  a  Government 
grant  of  a  hundred  and  fifty  francs  a  month.  The  worst 
paid  book-keeper  in  Paris  will  earn  as  much  by  the  time  he 
is  eighteen,  and  with  four  hours'  work  in  the  day.  By  un- 
hoped-for good  luck,  it  may  be  because  my  studies  had 
brought  me  distinction,  I  received  an  appointment  as  a  sur- 
veyor in  1828.  I  was  twenty-six  years  old.  They  sent  me, 
you  know  where,  into  a  sub-prefecture  with  a  salary  of  two 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  185 

thousand  five  hundred  francs.  The  money  matters  nothing. 
My  lot  is  at  any  rate  more  brilliant  than  a  carpenter's  son 
has  a  right  to  expect;  but  what  journeyman  grocer  put  into 
a  shop  at  the  age  of  sixteen  will  not  be  fairly  on  the  way  to 
an  independence  by  the  time  he  is  six-and-twenty  ? 

"Then  I  found  out  the  end  to  which  these  terrible  displays 
of  intelligence  were  directed,  and  why  the  gigantic  efforts, 
required  of  us  by  the  Government,  were  made.  The  Govern- 
ment set  me  to  count  paving-stones  and  measure  the  heaps 
of  road-metal  by  the  waysides.  I  must  repair,  keep  in  order, 
and  occasionally  construct  runnels  and  culverts,  maintain  the 
ways,  clean  out,  and  occasionally  open  ditches.  At  the  office 
I  must  answer  all  questions  relating  to  the  alignment  or 
the  planting  and  felling  of  trees.  These  are,  in  fact,  the 
principal  and  often  the  only  occupations  of  an  ordinary  sur- 
veyor. Perhaps  from  time  to  time  there  is  some  bit  of  level- 
ing to  be  done,  and  that  we  are  obliged  to  do  ourselves, 
though  any  of  the  foremen  with  his  practical  experience  could 
do  the  work  a  good  deal  better  than  we  can  with  all  our 
science. 

"There  are  nearly  four  hundred  of  us  altogether — ordinary 
surveyors  and  assistants — and  as  there  are  only  some  hundred 
odd  engineers-in-chief,  all  the  subordinates  cannot  hope  for 
promotion;  there  is  practically  no  higher  rank  to  absorb  the 
engineers-in-chief,  for  twelve  or  fifteen  inspectors-general  or 
divisionaries  scarcely  count,  and  their  posts  are  almost  as 
much  of  sinecures  in  our  corps  as  colonelcies  in  the  artillery 
when  the  battery  is  united  with  it.  An  ordinary  civil  en- 
gineer, like  a  captain  of  artillery,  knows  all  that  is  known 
about  his  work;  he  ought  not  to  need  any  one  to  look  after 
him  except  an  administrative  head  to  connect  the  eighty-six 
engineers  with  each  other  and  the  government,  for  a  single 
engineer  with  two  assistants  is  quite  enough  for  a  department. 
A  hierarchy  in  such  a  body  as  ours  works  in  this  way.  Ener- 
getic minds  are  subordinated  to  old  effete  intelligences,  who 
think  themselves  bound  to  distort  and  alter  (they  think  for 
the  better)  the  drafts  submitted  to  them;  perhaps  they  do 


186  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

this  simply  to  give  some  reason  for  their  existence ;  and  this, 
it  seems  to  me,  is  the  only  influence  exerted  on  public  works 
in  France  by  the  General  Council  of  Roads  and  Bridges. 

"Let  us  suppose,  however,  that  between  the  ages  of  thirty 
and  forty  I  become  an  engineer  of  the  first-class,  and  am 
an  engineer-in-chief  by  the  time  I  am  fifty.  Alas !  I  foresee 
my  future ;  it  lies  before  my  eyes.  My  engineer-in-chief  is  a 
man  of  sixty.  He  left  the  famous  Ecole  with  distinction, 
as  I  did;  he  has  grown  gray  in  two  departments  over  such 
work  as  I  am  doing;  he  has  become  the  most  commonplace 
man  imaginable,  has  fallen  from  the  heights  of  attainment 
he  once  reached;  nay,  more  than  that,  he  is  not  even  abreast 
of  science.  Science  has  made  progress,  and  he  has  remained 
stationary ;  worse  still,  has  forgotten  what  he  once  knew ! 
The  man  who  came  to  the  front  at  the  age  of  twenty-two  with 
every  sign  of  real  ability  has  nothing  of  it  left  now  but  the 
appearance.  At  the  very  outset  of  his  career  his  education 
was  especially  directed  to  mathematics  and  the  exact  sciences, 
and  he  took  no  interest  in  anything  that  was  not  'in  his  line.' 
You  would  scarcely  believe  it,  but  the  man  knows  absolutely 
nothing  of  other  branches  of  learning.  Mathematics  have 
dried  up  his  heart  and  brain.  I  cannot  tell  any  one  but  you 
what  a  nullity  he  really  is,  screened  by  the  name  of  the  Ecole 
polytechnique.  The  label  is  impressive;  and  people,  being 
prejudiced  in  his  favor,  do  not  dare  to  throw  any  doubt  on 
his  ability.  But  to  you  I  may  say  that  his  befogged  intellects 
have  cost  the  department  in  one  affair  a  million  francs,  where 
two  hundred  thousand  should  have  been  ample.  I  was  for 
protesting,  for  opening  the  prefect's  eyes,  and  what  not ;  but 
a  friend  of  mine,  another  surveyor,  told  me  about  a  man  in 
the  corps  who  became  a  kind  of  black  sheep  in  the  eyes  of 
administration  by  doing  something  of  this  sort.  'Would  you 
yourself  be  very  much  pleased,  when  you  are  engineer-in- 
chief,  to  have  your  mistakes  shown  up  by  a  subordinate?' 
asked  he.  'Your  engineer-in-chief  will  be  a  divisionary  in- 
spector before  very  long.  As  soon  as  one  of  us  makes  some 
egregious  blunder,  the  Administration  (which,  of  course, 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  187 

must  never  be  in  the  wrong)  withdraws  the  perpetrator  from 
active  service  and  makes  him  an  inspector.'  That  is  how  the 
reward  due  to  a  capable  man  becomes  a  sort  of  premium  on 
stupidity. 

"All  France  saw  one  disaster  in  the  heart  of  Paris,  the 
miserable  collapse  of  the  first  suspension  bridge  which  an 
engineer  (a  member  of  the  Academic  des  Sciences  moreover) 
endeavored  to  construct,  a  collapse  caused  by  blunders  which 
would  not  have  been  made  by  the  constructor  of  the  Canal 
de  Briare  in  the  time  of  Henri  IV.,  nor  by  the  monk  who 
built  the  Pont  Eoyal.  Him  too  the  Administration  consoled 
by  a  summons  to  the  Board  of  the  General  Council. 

"Are  the  technical  schools  really  manufactories  of  incom- 
petence? The  problem  requires  prolonged  observation.  If 
there  is  anything  in  what  I  say,  a  reform  is  needed,  at  any 
rate  in  the  way  in  which  they  are  carried  on,  for  I  do  not 
venture  to  question  the  usefulness  of  the  Ecoles.  Still,  look- 
ing back  over  the  past,  does  it  appear  that  France  has  ever 
lacked  men  of  great  ability  at  need,  or  the  talent  she  tries 
to  hatch  as  required  in  these  days  by  Monge's  method  ?  What 
school  turned  out  Vauban  save  the  great  school  called  'voca- 
tion?' Who  was  Piquet's  master?  When  genius  has  raised 
itself  above  the  social  level,  urged  upwards  by  a  vocation,  it 
is  almost  always  fully  equipped ;  and  in  that  case  your  man  is 
no  'specialist,'  but  has  something  universal  in  his  gift.  I 
do  not  believe  that  any  engineer  who  ever  left  the  Ecole 
could  build  one  of  the  miracles  of  architecture  which 
Leonardo  da  Vinci  reared ;  Leonardo  at  once  mechanician, 
architect,  and  painter,  one  of  the  inventors  of  hydraulic 
science,  the  indefatigable  constructor  of  canals.  They  are  so 
accustomed  while  yet  in  their  teens  to  the  bald  simplicity  of 
geometry,  that  by  the  time  they  leave  the  Ecole  they  have 
quite  lost  all  feeling  for  grace  or  ornament;  a  column  to 
their  eyes  i*  a  useless  waste  of  material ;  they  return  to  the 
point  where  art  begins — on  utility  they  take  their  stand,  and 
stay  there. 

"But  this  is  as  nothing  compared  with  the  disease  which 


188  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

is  consuming  me.  I  feel  that  a  most  terrible  change  is  being 
wrought  in  me;  I  feel  that  my  energy  and  faculties,  after 
the  exorbitant  strain  put  upon  them,  are  dwindling  and  grow- 
ing feeble.  The  influence  of  my  humdrum  life  is  creeping 
over  me.  After  such  efforts  as  mine,  I  feel  that  I  am  destined 
to  do  great  things,  and  I  am  confronted  by  the  most  trivial 
task  work,  such  as  verifying  yards  of  road  metal,  inspecting 
highways,  checking  inventories  of  stores.  I  have  not  enough 
to  do  to  fill  two  hours  in  the  day. 

"I  watch  my  colleagues  marry  and  fall  out  of  touch  with 
modern  thought.  Is  my  ambition  really  immoderate?  I 
should  like  to  serve  my  country.  My  country  required  me  to 
give  proof  of  no  ordinary  powers,  and  bade  me  become  an  en- 
cyclopedia of  the  sciences — and  here  I  am,  folding  my  arms 
in  an  obscure  corner  of  a  province.  I  am  not  allowed  to 
leave  the  place  where  I  am  penned  up,  to  exercise  my  wits 
by  trying  new  and  useful  experiments  elsewhere.  A  vague 
indefinable  grudge  is  the  certain  reward  awaiting  any  one  of 
us  who  follows  his  own  inspirations,  and  does  more  than  the 
department  requires  of  him.  The  most  that  such  a  man  ought 
to  hope  for  is  that  his  overweening  presumption  may  be 
passed  over,  his  talent  neglected,  while  his  project  receives 
decent  burial  in  the  pigeon-holes  at  headquarters.  What  will 
Vicat's  reward  be,  I  wonder?  (Between  ourselves,  Yicat 
is  the  only  man  among  us  who  has  made  any  real  advance  in 
the  science  of  construction.) 

"The  General  Council  of  Eoads  and  Bridges  is  partly  made 
up  of  men  worn  out  by  long  and  sometimes  honorable  ser- 
vice, but  whose  remaining  brain  power  only  exerts  itself  nega- 
tively; these  gentlemen  erase  anything  that  they  cannot  un- 
derstand at  their  age,  and  act  as  a  sort  of  extinguisher  to  be 
put  when  required  on  audacious  innovations.  The  Council 
might  have  been  created  for  the  express  purpose  of  paralyz- 
ing the  arm  of  the  generous  younger  generation,  which  only 
asks  for  leave  to  work,  and  would  fain  serve  France. 

"Monstrous  things  happen  in  Paris.  The  future  of  a 
province  depends  on  the  visa  of  these  bureaucrats.  I  have  not 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  189 

time  to  tell  you  about  all  the  intrigues  which  balk  the  best 
schemes;  for  them  the  best  schemes  are,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
those  which  open  up  the  best  prospects  of  money-making  to 
the  greed  of  speculators  and  companies,  which  knock  most 
abuses  on  the  head,  for  abuses  are  always  stronger  than  the 
spirit  of  improvement  in  France.  In  five  years'  time  my  old 
self-will  no  longer  exists.  I  shall  see  my  ambitions  die  out  in 
me,  and  my  noble  desire  to  use  the  faculties  which  my  country 
bade  me  display,  and  then  left  to  rust  in  my  obscure  corner. 

"Taking  the  most  favorable  view  possible,  my  outlook 
seems  to  me  to  be  very  poor.  I  took  advantage  of  leave  of  ab- 
sence to  come  to  Paris.  I  want  to  change  my  career,  to  find 
scope  for  my  energies,  knowledge,  and  activity.  I  shall  send 
in  my  resignation,  and  go  to  some  country  where  men  with 
my  special  training  are  needed,  where  great  things  may  be 
done.  If  none  of  all  this  is  possible,  I  will  throw  in  my  lot 
with  some  of  these  new  doctrines  which  seem  as  if  they  must 
make  some  great  change  in  the  present  order  of  things,  by 
directing  the  workers  to  better  purpose.  For  what  are  we  but 
laborers  without  work,  tools  lying  idle  in  the  warehouse  ?  We 
are  organized  as  if  it  was  a  question  of  shaking  the  globe, 
and  we  are  required  to  do — nothing. 

"I  am  conscious  that  there  is  something  great  in  me  which 
is  pining  away  and  will  perish;  I  tell  you  this  with  mathe- 
matical explicitness.  But  I  should  like  to  have  your  advice 
before  I  make  a  change  in  my  condition.  I  look  on  myself  as 
your  son,  and  should  never  take  any  important  step  with- 
out consulting  you,  for  your  experience  is  as  great  as  your 
goodness.  I  know,  of  course,  that  when  the  Government 
has  obtained  its  specially  trained  men,  it  can  no  more  set  its 
engineers  to  construct  public  monuments  than  it  can  declare 
war  to  give  the  army  an  opportunity  of  winning  great  battles 
and  of  finding  out  which  are  its  great  captains.  But,  then, 
as  the  man  has  never  failed  to  appear  when  circumstances 
called  for  him ;  as,  at  the  moment  when  there  is  much  money 
to  be  spent  and  great  things  to  be  done,  one  of  these  unique 
men  of  genius  springs  up  from  the  crowd;  and  as,  particu- 


IdO  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

larly  in  matters  of  this  kind,  one  Vauban  is  enough  at  a  time, 
nothing  could  better  demonstrate  the  utter  uselessness  of  the 
institution.  In  conclusion,  when  a  picked  man's  mental 
energies  have  been  stimulated  by  all  this  preparation,  how 
can  the  Government  help  seeing  that  he  will  make  any  amount 
of  struggle  before  he  allows  himself  to  be  effaced  ?  Is  it  wise 
policy  ?  What  is  it  but  a  way  of  kindling  burning  ambition  ? 
Would  they  bid  all  those  perfervid  heads  learn  to  calculate 
anything  and  everything  but  the  probabilities  of  their  own 
futures? 

"There  are,  no  doubt,  exceptions  among  some  six  hundred 
young  men,  some  firm  and  unbending  characters,  who  decline 
to  be  withdrawn  in  this  way  from  circulation.  I  know  some  of 
them ;  but  if  the  story  of  their  struggles  with  men  and  things 
could  be  told  in  full;  if  it  were  known  how  that,  while  full 
of  useful  projects  and  ideas  which  would  put  life  and  wealth 
into  stagnant  country  districts,  they  meet  with  hindrances 
put  in  their  way  by  the  very  men  who  (so  the  Government 
led  them  to  believe)  would  give  them  help  and  countenance, 
the  strong  man,  the  man  of  talent,  the  man  whose  nature  is 
a  miracle,  would  be  thought  a  hundred  times  more  unfor- 
tunate and  more  to  be  pitied  than  the  man  whose  degenerate 
nature  tamely  resigns  himself  to  the  atrophy  of  his  faculties. 

"So  I  would  prefer  to  direct  some  private  commercial  or 
industrial  enterprise,  and  live  on  very  little,  while  trying  to 
find  a  solution  of  some  one  of  the  many  unsolved  problems  of 
industry  and  modern  life,  rather  than  remain  where  I  am. 
You  will  say  that  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  me  from  em- 
ploying my  powers  as  it  is;  that  in  the  silence  of  this  hum- 
drum life  I  might  set  myself  to  find  the  solution  of  one  of 
those  problems  which  presses  on  humanity.  Ah !  monsieur, 
do  you  not  understand  what  the  influence  of  the  provinces  is ; 
the  enervating  effect  of  a  life  just  sufficiently  busy  to  fill  the 
dnys  with  all  but  futile  work,  but  yet  not  full  enough  to 
give  occupation  to  the  powers  so  fully  developed  by  such  a 
training  as  ours?  You  will  not  think,  my  dear  guardian, 
that  I  am  eaten  up  with  the  ambition  of  money-making,  or 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  191 

consumed  with  a  mad  desire  for  fame.  I  have  not  learned  to 
calculate  to  so  little  purpose  that  I  cannot  measure  the 
emptiness  of  fame.  The  inevitable  activity  of  the  life  has 
led  me  not  to  think  of  marriage ;  and  looking  at  my  present 
prospects,  I  have  not  so  good  an  opinion  of  existence  as  to 
give  such  a  sorry  present  to  another  self.  Although  I  look 
upon  money  as  one  of  the  most  powerful  instruments  that 
can  be  put  in  the  hands  of  a  civilized  man,  money  is,  after 
all,  only  a  means.  My  sole  pleasure  lies  in  the  assurance  that 
I  am  serving  my  country.  To  have  employment  for  my  facul- 
ties in  a  congenial  atmosphere  would  be  the  height  of  enjoy- 
ment for  me.  Perhaps  among  your  acquaintance  in  your 
part  of  the  world,  in  the  circle  on  which  you  shine,  you  might 
hear  of  something  which  requires  some  of  the  aptitude  which 
you  know  that  I  possess ;  I  will  wait  six  months  for  an  answer 
from  you. 

"These  things  which  I  am  writing  to  you,  dear  patron  and 
friend,  others  are  thinking.  I  have  seen  a  good  many  of  my 
colleagues  or  old  scholars  at  the  Ecole,  caught,  as  I  was,  in 
the  snare  of  a  special  training;  ordnance  surveyors,  captain- 
professors,  captains  in  the  Artillery,  doomed  (as  they  see)  to 
be  captains  for  the  rest  of  their  days,  bitterly  regretting  that 
they  did  not  go  into  the  regular  army.  Again  and  again, 
in  fact,  we  have  admitted  to  each  other  in  confidence  that 
we  are  victims  of  a  long  mystification,  which  we  only  dis- 
cover when  it  is  too  late  to  draw  back,  when  the  mill-horse  is 
used  to  the  round,  and  the  sick  man  accustomed  to  his 
disease. 

"After  looking  carefully  into  these  melancholy  results,  I 
have  asked  myself  the  following  questions,  which  I  send  to 
you,  as  a  man  of  sense,  whose  mature  wisdom  will  see  all  that 
lies  in  them,  knowing  that  they  are  fruit  of  thought  refined 
by  the  fires  of  painful  experience. 

"What  end  has  the  Government  in  view?  To  obtain  the 
best  abilities?  If  so,  the  Government  sets  to  work  to  obtain 
a  directly  opposite  result :  if  it  had  hated  talent,  it  could  not 
have  had  better  success  in  producing  respectable  mediocrities. 


392  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

— Or  does  it  intend  to  open  out  a  career  to  selected  intelli- 
gence ?  It  could  not  well  have  given  it  a  more  mediocre  posi- 
tion. There  is  not  a  man  sent  out  by  the  Ecoles  who  does  not 
regret  between  fifty  and  sixty  that  he  fell  into  the  snare 
concealed  by  the  offers  of  the  Government. — Does  it  mean 
to  secure  men  of  genius?  What  really  great  man  have  the 
Ecoles  turned  out  since  1790?  Would  Cachin,  the  genius 
to  whom  we  owe  Cherbourg,  have  existed  but  for  Napoleon? 
It  was  Imperial  despotism  which  singled  him  out;  the  Con- 
stitutional Administration  would  have  stifled  him. — Does  the 
Academic  des  Sciences  number  many  members  who  have 
passed  through  the  technical  schools  ?  Two  or  three,  it  may 
be;  but  the  man  of  genius  invariably  appears  from  outside. 
In  the  particular  sciences  which  are  studied  at  these  schools, 
genius  obeys  no  laws  but  its  own;  it  only  develops  under 
circumstances  over  which  we  have  no  control;  and  neither 
the  Government,  nor  anthropology,  knows  the  conditions. 
Riquet,  Perronet,  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  Cachin,  Palladio, 
Brunelleschi,  Michael  Angelo,  Bramante,  Vauban,  and  Vicat 
all  derived  their  genius  from  unobserved  causes  and  prepara- 
tion to  which  we  give  the  name  of  chance — the  great  word 
for  fools  to  fall  back  upon.  Schools  or  no  schools,  these 
sublime  workers  have  never  been  lacking  in  every  age.  And 
now,  does  the  Government,  by  means  of  organizing,  obtain 
works  of  public  utility  better  done  or  at  a  cheaper  rate? 

"In  the  first  place,  private  enterprise  does  very  well  with- 
out professional  engineers ;  and,  in  the  second,  State-directed 
works  are  the  most  expensive  of  all;  and  besides  the  actual 
outlay,  there  is  the  cost  of  the  maintenance  of  the  great  staff 
of  the  Roads  and  Bridges  Department.  Finally,  in  other 
countries  where  they  have  no  institutions  of  this  kind,  in 
Germany,  England,  and  Italy,  such  public  works  are  carried 
out  quite  as  well,  and  cost  less  than  ours  in  France.  Each 
of  the  three  countries  is  well  known  for  new  and  useful  in- 
ventions of  this  kind.  I  know  it  is  the  fashion  to  speak  of 
our  Ecoles  as  if  they  were  the  envy  of  Europe;  but  Europe 
has  been  watching  us  these  fifteen  years,  and  nowhere  will 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  193 

you  find  the  like  instituted  elsewhere.  The  English,  those 
shrewd  men  of  business,  have  uetter  schools  among  their 
working  classes,  where  they  train  practical  men,  who  become 
conspicuous  at  once  when  they  rise  from  practical  work  to 
theory.  Stephenson  and  Macadam  were  not  pupils  in  these 
famous  institutions  of  ours. 

"But  where  is  the  use  ?  "When  young  and  clever  engineers, 
men  of  spirit  and  enthusiasm,  have  solved  at  the  outset  of  their 
career  the  problem  of  the  maintenance  of  the  roads  of  France, 
which  requires  hundreds  of  millions  of  francs  every  twenty- 
five  years,  which  roads  are  in  a  deplorable  state,  it  is  in  vain 
for  them  to  publish  learned  treatises  and  memorials;  every- 
thing is  swallowed  down  by  the  board  of  direction,  every- 
thing goes  in  and  nothing  comes  out  of  a  central  bureau  in 
Paris,  where  the  old  men  are  jealous  of  their  juniors,  and 
high  places  are  refuges  for  superannuated  blunderers. 

"This  is  how,  with  a  body  of  educated  men  distributed  all 
over  France,  a  body  which  is  part  of  the  machinery  of  ad- 
ministrative government,  and  to  whom  the  country  looks 
for  direction  and  enlightenment  on  the  great  questions 
within  their  department,  it  will  probably  happen  that  we  in 
France  shall  still  be  talking  about  railways  when  other  coun- 
tries have  finished  theirs.  Now,  if  ever  France  ought  to 
demonstrate  the  excellence  of  her  technical  schools  as  an  in- 
stitution, should  it  not  be  in  a  magnificent  public  work  of 
this  special  kind,  destined  to  change  the  face  of  many  coun- 
tries, and  to  double  the  length  of  human  life  by  modify- 
ing the  laws  of  time  and  space  ?  Belgium,  the  United  States, 
Germany,  and  England,  without  an  Ecole  polytechnique,  will 
have  a  network  of  railways  while  our  engineers  are  still 
tracing  out  the  plans,  and  hideous  jobbery  lurking  behind 
the  projects  will  check  their  execution.  You  cannot  lay  a 
stone  in  France  until  half  a  score  of  scribblers  in  Paris  have 
drawn  up  a  driveling  report  that  nobody  wants.  The  Gov- 
ernment, therefore,  gets  no  good  of  its  technical  schools ;  and 
as  for  the  individual — he  is  tied  down  to  a  mediocre  career, 
his  life  is  a  cruel  delusion.  Certain  it  is  that  with  the  abilities 


194  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

which  he  displayed  between  the  ages  of  sixteen  and  twenty- 
five  he  would  have  gained  more  reputation  and  riches  if  he 
had  been  left  to  shift  for  himself  than  he  will  acquire  in  the 
career  to  which  Government  condemns  him.  As  a  merchant, 
a  scientific  man,  or  a  soldier,  this  picked  man  would  have 
a  wide  field  before  him,  his  precious  faculties  and  enthusiasm 
would  not  have  been  prematurely  and  stupidly  exhausted. 
Then  where  is  the  advance?  Assuredly  the  individual  and 
the  State  both  lose  by  the  present  system.  Does  not  an  ex- 
periment carried  on  for  half  a  century  show  that  changes 
are  needed  in  the  way  the  institution  is  worked  ?  What  priest- 
hood qualifies  a  man  for  the  task  of  selecting  from  a  whole 
generation  those  who  shall  hereafter  be  the  learned  class  of 
France?  What  studies  should  not  these  high  priests  of  Des- 
tiny have  made?  A  knowledge  of  mathematics  is,  perhaps, 
scarcely  so  necessary  as  physiological  knowledge;  and  does 
it  not  seem  to  you  that  something  of  that  clairvoyance  which 
is  the  wizardry  of  great  men  might  be  required  too?  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  the  examiners  are  old  professors,  men 
worthy  of  all  honor,  grown  old  in  harness;  their  duty  it  is 
to  discover  the  best  memories,  and  there  is  an  end  of  it; 
they  can  do  nothing  but  what  is  required  of  them.  Truly 
their  functions  should  be  the  most  important  ones  in  the 
State,  and  call  for  extraordinary  men  to  fulfil  them. 

"Do  not  think,  my  dear  friend  and  patron,  that  my  censure 
is  confined  to  the  Ecole  through  which  I  myself  passed;  it 
applies  not  only  to  the  institution  itself,  but  also  and  still 
more  to  the  methods  by  which  lads  are  admitted;  that  is  to 
say,  to  the  system  of  competitive  examination.  Competi- 
tion is  a  modern  invention,  and  essentially  bad.  It  is  bad 
not  only  in  learning  but  in  every  possible  connection,  in  the 
arts,  in  every  election  made  of  men,  projects,  or  things.  It 
is  unfortunate  that  our  famous  schools  should  not  have 
turned  out  better  men  than  any  other  chance  assemblage  of 
lads;  but  it  is  still  more  disgraceful  that  among  the  prize- 
men at  the  Institute  there  has  been  no  great  painter,  mu- 
sician, architect,  or  sculptor;  even  as  for  the  past  twenty 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  .   195 

years  the  general  elections  have  swept  no  single  great  states- 
man to  the  front  out  of  all  the  shoals  of  mediocrities.  My 
remarks  have  a  bearing  upon  an  error  which  is  vitiating  both 
politics  and  education  in  France.  This  cruel  error  is  based 
on  the  following  principle,  which  organizers  have  over- 
looked : — 

"  'Nothing  in  experience  or  in  the  nature  of  things  can 
warrant  the  assumption  that  the  intellectual  qualities  of  early 
manhood  will  l)e  those  of  maturity.' 

"At  the  present  time  I  have  been  brought  in  contact  with 
several  distinguished  men  who  are  studying  the  many  moral 
maladies  which  prey  upon  France.  They  recognize,  as  I  do, 
the  fact  that  secondary  education  forces  a  sort  of  temporary 
capacity  in  those  who  have  neither  present  work  nor  future 
prospects;  and  that  the  enlightenment  diffused  by  primary 
education  is  of  no  advantage  to  the  State,  because  it  is  bereft 
of  belief  and  sentiment. 

"Our  whole  educational  system  calls  for  sweeping  reform, 
which  should  be  carried  out  under  the  direction  of  a  man  of 
profound  knowledge,  a  man  with  a  strong  will,  gifted  with 
that  legislative  faculty  which,  possibly,  is  found  in  Jean- 
Jacques  Bousseau  alone  of  all  moderns. 

"Then,  perhaps,  the  superfluous  specialists  might  find  em- 
ployment in  elementary  teaching;  it  is  badly  needed  by  the 
mass  of  the  people.  We  have  not  enough  patient  and  devoted 
teachers  for  the  training  of  these  classes.  The  deplorable 
prevalence  of  crimes  and  misdemeanors  points  to  a  weak  spot 
in  our  social  system — the  one-sided  education  which  tends  to 
weaken  the  fabric  of  society,  by  teaching  the  masses  to  think 
sufficiently  to  reject  the  religious  beliefs  necessary  for  their 
government,  yet  not  enough  to  raise  them  to  a  conception 
of  the  theory  of  obedience  and  duty,  which  is  the  last  word 
of  transcendental  philosophy.  It  is  impossible  to  put  a  whole 
nation  through  a  course  of  Kant;  and  belief  and  use  and 
wont  are  more  wholesome  for  the  people  than  study  and 
ai-gument. 

"If  I  had  to  begin  again  from  the  very  beginning,  I  dare 


196   -  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

say  I  might  enter  a  seminary  and  incline  to  the  life  of  a 
simple  country  parson  or  a  village  schoolmaster.  But  now 
I  have  gone  too  far  to  be  a  mere  elementary  teacher;  and, 
besides,  a  wider  field  of  action  is  open  to  me  than  the  school- 
house  or  the  parish.  I  cannot  go  the  whole  way  with  the 
Saint-Simonians,  with  whom  I  am  tempted  to  throw  in  my 
lot;  but  with  all  their  mistakes,  they  have  laid  a  finger  on 
many  weak  points  in  our  social  system,  the  results  of  our 
legislation,  which  will  be  palliated  rather  than  remedied — • 
simply  putting  off  the  evil  day  for  France. — Good-bye,  dear 
sir;  in  spite  of  these  observations  of  mine,  rest  assured  of  my 
respectful  and  faithful  friendship,  a  friendship  which  can 
only  grow  with  time. 

"GREGOIRE  GERARD." 

Acting  on  old  business  habit,  Grossetete  had  indorsed  the 
letter  with  the  rough  draft  of  a  reply,  and  written  beneath 
it  the  sacramental  word  "Answered." 

"MY  DEAR  GERARD, — It  is  the  more  unnecessary  to  enter 
upon  any  discussion  of  the  observations  contained  in  your 
letter,  since  that  chance  (to  make  use  of  the  word  for  fools) 
enables  me  to  make  you  an  offer  which  will  practically  ex- 
tricate you  from  a  position  in  which  you  find  yourself  so 
ill  at  ease.  Mme.  Graslin,  who  owns  the  Forest  of  Monte- 
gnac,  and  a  good  deal  of  barren  land  below  the  long  range 
of  hills  on  which  the  forest  lies,  has  a  notion  of  turning  her 
vast  estates  to  some  account,  of  exploiting  the  woods  and 
bringing  the  stony  land  into  cultivation.  Small  pay  and 
plenty  of  work!  A  great  result  to  be  brought  about  by  in- 
significant means,  a  district  to  be  transformed !  Abundance 
made  to  spring  up  on  the  barest  rock !  Is  not  this  what  you 
wished  to  do,  you  who  would  fain  realize  a  poet's  dream? 
From  the  sincere  ring  of  your  letter,  I  do  not  hesitate  to 
ask  you  to  come  to  Limoges  to  see  me;  but  do  not  send  in 
your  resignation,  my  friend,  only  sever  your  connection  with 
your  corps,  explain  to  the  authorities  that  you  are  about  to 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  1»T 

make  a  study  of  some  problems  that  lie  within  your  province, 
but  outside  the  limits  of  your  work  for  the  Government.  In 
that  way  you  will  lose  none  of  your  privileges,  and  you  will 
gain  time  in  which  to  decide  whether  this  scheme  of  the  cure's 
at  Montegnac,  which  finds  favor  in  Mme.  Graslin's  eyes,  is  a 
feasible  one.  If  these  vast  changes  should  prove  to  be  prac- 
ticable, I  will  lay  the  possible  advantages  before  you  by  word 
of  mouth,  and  not  by  letter. — Believe  me  to  be,  always  sin- 
cerely, your  friend, 

"GBOSSET^TE." 

For  all  reply  Mme.  Graslin  wrote: — 

"Thank  you,  my  friend;  I  am  waiting  to  see  your  pro- 
tege." 

She  showed  the  letter  to  M.  Bonnet  with  the  remark,  "Here 
is  one  more  wounded  creatur.6  seeking  the  great  hospital !" 

The  cure  read  the  letter  and  re-read  it,  took  two  or  three 
turns  upon  the  terrace,  and  handed  the  paper  back  to  Mme. 
Graslin. 

"It  comes  from  a  noble  nature,  the  man  has  something 
in  him,"  he  said.  "He  writes  that  the  schools,  invented  by 
the  spirit  of  the  Revolution,  manufacture  ineptitude;  for 
my  own  part,  I  call  them  manufactories  of  unbelief;  for  if 
M.  Gerard  is  not  an  atheist,  he  is  a  Protestant " 

"We  will  ask  him,"  she  said,  struck  with  the  curb's  an- 
swer. 

A  fortnight  later,  in  the  month  of  December,  M.  Grosse- 
tete  came  to  Montegnac,  in  spite  of  the  cold,  to  introduce 
his  protege.  Veronique  and  M.  Bonnet  awaited  his  arrival 
with  impatience. 

"One  must  love  you  very  much,  my  child,"  said  the  old 
man,  taking  both  of  Veronique's  hands,  and  kissing  them 
with  the  old-fashioned  elderly  gallantry  which  a  woman  never 
takes  amiss;  "yes,  one  must  love  you  very  much  indeed  to 
stir  out  of  Limoges  in  such  weather  as  this;  but  I  have  made 

up  my  mind  that  I  must  come  in  person  to  make  you  a 
-14 


198  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

present  of  M.  Gregoire  Gerard.  Here  he  is. — A  man  after 
your  own  heart,  M.  Bonnet,"  the  old  banker  added  with  an 
affectionate  greeting  to  the  cure. 

Gerard's  appearance  was  not  very  prepossessing.  He  was 
a  thick-set  man  of  middle  height;  his  neck  was  lost  in  his 
shoulders,  to  use  the  common  expression;  he  had  the  golden 
hair  and  red  eyes  of  an  Albino;  and  his  eyelashes  and  eye- 
brows were  almost  white.  Although,  as  often  happens  in 
these  cases,  his  complexion  was  dazzlingly  fair,  its  original 
beauty  was  destroyed  by  the  very  apparent  pits  and  seams 
left  by  an  attack  of  smallpox;  much  reading  had  doubtless 
injured  his  eyesight,  for  he  wore  colored  spectacles.  Nor 
when  he  divested  himself  of  a  thick  overcoat,  like  a  gen- 
darme's, did  his  dress  redeem  these  personal  defects. 

The  way  in  which  his  clothes  were  put  on  and  buttoned, 
like  his  untidy  cravat  and  crumpled  shirt,  were  distinctive 
signs  of  that  personal  carelessness,  laid  to  the  charge  of 
learned  men,  who  are  all,  more  or  less,  oblivious  of  their  sur- 
roundings. His  face  and  bearing,  the  great  development  of 
chest  and  shoulders,  as  compared  with  his  thin  legs,  sug- 
gested a  sort  of  physical  deterioration  produced  by  meditative 
habits,  not  uncommon  in  those  who  think  much;  but  the 
stout  heart  and  eager  intelligence  of  the  writer  of  the  letter 
were  plainly  visible  on  a  forehead  which  might  have  been 
chiseled  in  Carrara  marble.  Nature  seemed  to  have  reserved 
her  seal  of  greatness  for  the  brow,  and  stamped  it  with  the 
steadfastness  and  goodness  of  the  man.  The  nose  was  of  the 
true  Gallic  type,  and  blunted.  The  firm,  straight  lines  of  the 
mouth  indicated  an  absolute  discretion  and  the  sense  of  econ- 
omy ;  but  the  whole  face  looked  old  before  its  time,  and  worn 
with  study. 

Mme.  Graslin  turned  to  speak  to  the  inventor.  "We  al- 
ready owe  you  thanks,  monsieur,"  she  said,  "for  being  so  good 
as  to  come  to  superintend  engineering  work  in  a  country 
which  can  hold  out  no  inducements  to  you  save  the  satisfac- 
tion of  knowing  that  you  can  do  good." 

"M.  Grossetete  told  me  enough  about  you  on  our  way  here, 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  199 

madame,"  he  answered,  "to  make  me  feel  very  glad  to  be 
of  any  use  to  you.  The  prospect  of  living  near  to  you  and 
M.  Bonnet  seemed  to  me  charming.  Unless  I  am  driven  away, 
I  look  to  spend  my  life  here." 

"We  will  try  to  give  you  no  cause  for  changing  your  opin- 
ion," smiled  Mme.  Graslin. 

Grossetete  took  her  aside.  "Here  are  the  papers  which 
the  public  prosecutor  gave  me,"  he  said.  "He  seemed  very 
much  surprised  that  you  did  not  apply  directly  to  him.  All 
that  you  have  asked  has  been  done  promptly  and  with  good- 
will. In  the  first  place,  your  protege  will  be  reinstated  in  all 
his  rights  as  a  citizen ;  and  in  the  second,  Catherine  Curieux 
will  be  sent  to  you  in  three  months'  time. 

"Where  is  she  ?"  asked  Veronique. 

"At  the  Hopital  Saint-Louis,"  Grossetete  answered.  "She 
cannot  leave  Paris  until  she  is  recovered." 

"Ah!  is  she  ill,  poor  thing?" 

"You  will  find  all  that  you  want  to  know  here,"  said 
Grossetete,  holding  out  a  packet. 

Veronique  went  back  to  her  guests,  and  led  the  way  to  the 
magnificent  dining-hall  on  the  ground  floor,  walking  between 
Grossetete  and  Gerard.  She  presided  over  the  dinner  without 
joining  them,  for  she  had  made  it  a  rule  to  take  her  meals 
alone  since  she  had  come  to  Montegnac.  No  one  but  Aline 
was  in  the  secret,  which  the  girl  kept  scrupulously  until  her 
mistress  was  in  danger  of  her  life. 

The  mayor  of  Montegnac,  the  justice  of  the  peace,  and  the 
doctor  had  naturally  been  invited  to  meet  the  newcomer. 

The  doctor,  a  young  man  of  seven-and-twenty,  Roubaud 
by  name,  was  keenly  desirous  of  making  the  acquaintance  of 
the  great  lady  of  Limousin.  The  cure  was  the  better  pleased 
to  introduce  him  at  the  chateau  since  it  was  M.  Bonnet's 
wish  that  Veronique  should  gather  some  sort  of  society  about 
her,  to  distract  her  thoughts  from  herself,  and  to  find  some 
mental  food.  Eoubaud  was  one  of  the  young  doctors  per- 
fectly equipped  in  his  science,  such  as  the  J5cole  de  medecine 
turns  out  in  Paris,  a  man  who  might,  without  doubt,  have 


200  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

looked  to  a  brilliant  future  in  the  vast  theatre  of  the  capital ; 
but  he  had  seen  something  of  the  strife  of  ambitions  there, 
and  took  fright,  conscious  that  he  had  more  knowledge  than 
capacity  for  scheming,  more  aptitude  than  greed;  his  gentle 
nature  had  inclined  him  to  the  narrower  theatre  of  provincial 
life,  where  he  hoped  to  win  appreciation  sooner  than  in 
Paris. 

At  Limoges  Roubaud  had  come  into  collision  with  old- 
fashioned  ways  and  patients  not  to  be  shaken  in  their  preju- 
dices; he  had  been  won  over  by  M.  Bonnet,  who  at  sight  of 
the  kindly  and  prepossessing  face  had  thought  that  here  was 
a  worker  to  co-operate  with  him.  Eoubaud  was  short  and 
fair-haired,  and  would  have  been  rather  uninteresting  look- 
ing but  for  the  gray  eyes,  which  revealed  the  physiologist's 
sagacity  and  the  perseverance  of  the  student.  Hitherto 
Montegnac  was  fain  to  be  content  with  an  old  army  sur- 
geon, who  found  his  cellars  a  good  deal  more  interesting  than 
his  patients,  and  who,  moreover,  was  past  the  hard  work  of 
a  country  doctor.  He  happened  to  die  just  at  that  time. 
Roubaud  had  been  in  Montegnac  for  some  eighteen  months, 
and  was  very  popular  there;  but  Desplein's  young  disciple, 
one  of  the  followers  of  Cabanis,  was  no  Catholic  in  his  be- 
liefs. In  fact,  as  to  religion,  he  had  lapsed  into  a  fatal  in- 
difference, from  which  he  was  not  to  be  roused.  He  was 
the  despair  of  the  cure,  not  that  there  was  any  harm  what- 
ever in  him,  his  invariable  absence  from  church  was  excused 
by  his  profession,  he  never  talked  on  religious  topics,  he  was 
incapable  of  making  proselytes,  no  good  Catholic  could  have 
behaved  better  than  he,  but  he  declined  to  occupy  himself 
with  a  problem  which,  to  his  thinking,  was  beyond  the  scope 
of  the  human  mind;  and  the  cure  once  hearing  him  let  fall 
the  remark  that  Pantheism  was  the  religion  of  all  great 
thinkers,  fancied  that  Roubaud  inclined  to  the  Pythagorean 
doctrine  of  the  transformation  of  souls. 

Roubaud,  meeting  Mme.  Graslin  for  the  first  time,  felt 
violently  startled  at  the  sight  of  her.  His  medical  knowledge 
enabled  him  to  divine  in  her  face  and  bearing  and  worn 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  201 

features  unheard-of  suffering  of  mind  and  body,  a  preter- 
natural strength  of  character,  and  the  great  faculties  which 
can  endure  the  strain  of  very  different  vicissitudes.  He,  in 
a  manner,  read  her  inner  history,  even  the  dark  places  de- 
liberately hidden  away;  and  more  than  this,  he  saw  the  dis- 
ease that  preyed  upon  the  secret  heart  of  this  fair  woman; 
for  there  are  certain  tints  in  human  faces  that  indicate  a 
poison  working  in  the  thoughts,  even  as  the  color  of  fruit 
will  betray  the  presence  of  the  worm  at  its  core.  From 
that  time  forward  M.  Eoubaud  felt  so  strongly  attracted  to 
Mme.  Graslin,  that  he  feared  to  be  drawn  beyond  the  limit 
where  friendship  ends.  There  was  an  eloquence,  which  men 
always  understand,  in  Veronique's  brows  and  attitude,  and, 
above  all,  in  her  eyes;  it  was  sufficiently  unmistakable  that 
she  was  dead  to  love,  even  as  other  women  with  a  like  elo- 
quence proclaim  the  contrary.  The  doctor  became  her  chiv- 
alrous worshiper  on  the  spof;.  He  exchanged  a  swift  glance 
with  the  cure,  and  M.  Bonnet  said  within  himself: 

"Here  is  the  flash  from  heaven  that  will  change  this  poor 
unbeliever !  Mme.  Graslin  will  have  more  eloquence  than  I." 

The  mayor,  an  old  countryman,  overawed  by  the  splendor 
of  the  dining-room,  and  surprised  to  be  asked  to  meet  one 
of  the  richest  men  in  the  department,  had  put  on  his  best 
clothes  for  the  occasion;  he  felt  somewhat  uneasy  in  them, 
and  scarcely  more  at  ease  with  his  company.  Mme.  Graslin, 
too,  in  her  mourning  dress  was  an  awe-inspiring  figure;  the 
worthy  mayor  was  dumb.  He  had  once  been  a  farmer  at 
Saint-Leonard,  had  bought  the  one  habitable  house  in  the 
township,  and  cultivated  the  land  that  belonged  to  it  himself. 
He  could  read  and  write,  but  only  managed  to  acquit  himself 
in  his  official  capacity  with  the  help  of  the  justice's  clerk,  who 
prepared  his  work  for  him ;  so  he  ardently  desired  the  advent 
of  a  notary,  meaning  to  lay  the  burden  of  his  public  duties 
on  official  shoulders  when  that  day  should  come;  but  Mon- 
tegnac  was  so  poverty-stricken,  that  a  resident  notary  was 
hardly  needed,  and  the  notaries  of  the  principal  place  in 
the  arrondissement  found  clients  in  Montegnac. 


202  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

The  justice  of  the  peace,  Clousier  by  name,  was  a  retired 
barrister  from  Limoges.  Briefs  had  grown  scarce  with  the 
learned  gentleman,  owing  to  a  tendency  on  his  part  to  put  in 
practice  the  noble  maxim  that  a  barrister  is  the  first  judge 
of  the  client  and  the  case.  About  the  year  1809  he  obtained 
this  appointment;  the  salary  was  a  meagre  pittance,  but 
enough  to  live  upon.  In  this  way  he  had  reached  the  most 
honorable  but  the  most  complete  penury.  Twenty-two  years 
of  residence  in  the  poor  commune  had  transformed  the 
worthy  lawyer  into  a  countryman,  scarcely  to  be  distinguished 
from  any  of  the  small  farmers  round  about,  whom  he  re- 
sembled even  in  the  cut  of  his  coat.  But  beneath  Clousier's 
homely  exterior  dwelt  a  clairvoyant  spirit,  a  philosophical 
politician  whose  Gallio's  attitude  was  due  to  his  perfect 
knowledge  of  human  nature  and  of  men's  motives.  For  a 
long  time  he  had  baffled  M.  Bonnet's  perspicacity.  The  man 
who,  in  a  higher  sphere,  might  have  played  the  active  part 
of  a  L'Hopital,  incapable  of  intrigue,  like  all  deep  thinkers, 
had  come  at  last  to  lead  the  contemplative  life  of  a  hermit 
of  olden  time.  Rich  without  doubt,  with  all  the  gains  of 
privation,  he  was  swayed  by  no  personal  considerations;  he 
knew  the  law  and  judged  impartially.  His  life,  reduced  to 
the  barest  necessaries,  was  regular  and  pure.  The  peasants 
loved  and  respected  M.  Clousier  for  the  fatherly  disinterested- 
ness with  which  he  settled  their  disputes  and  gave  advice  in 
their  smallest  difficulties.  For  the  last  two  years  "Old 
Clousier,"  as  every  one  called  him  in  Montegnac,  had  had 
one  of  his  nephews  to  help  him,  a  rather  intelligent  young 
man,  who,  at  a  later  day,  contributed  not  a  little  to  the  pros- 
perity of  the  commune. 

The  most  striking  thing  about  the  old  man's  face  was  the 
broad  vast  forehead.  Two  bushy  masses  of  white  hair  stood 
out  on  either  side  of  it.  A  florid  complexion  and  magisterial 
portliness  might  give  the  impression  that  (in  spite  of  his  real 
sobriety)  he  was  as  earnest  a  disciple  of  Bacchus  as  of  Trop- 
long  and  Toullier.  His  scarcely  audible  voice  indicated 
asthmatic  oppression  of  breathing;  possibly  the  dry  air  of 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  303 

Montegnac  had  counted  for  something  in  his  decision  when 
he  made  up  his  mind  to  accept  the  post.  His  little  house 
had  been  fitted  up  for  him  by  the  well-to-do  sabot  maker, 
his  landlord.  Clousier  had  already  seen  Veronique  at  church, 
and  had  formed  his  own  opinion  of  her,  which  opinion  he 
kept  to  himself ;  he  had  not  even  spoken  of  her  to  M.  Bonnet, 
with  whom  he  was  beginning  to  feel  at  home.  For  the  first 
time  in  his  life,  the  justice  of  the  peace  found  himself  in  the 
company  of  persons  able  to  understand  him. 

When  the  six  guests  had  taken  their  places  round  a  hand- 
somely-appointed table  (for  Veronique  had  brought  all  her 
furniture  with  her  to  Montegnac),  there  was  a  brief  em- 
barrassed pause.  The  doctor,  the  mayor,  and  the  justice  were 
none  of  them  acquainted  with  Grossetete  or  with  Gerard. 
But  during  the  first  course  the  banker's  geniality  thawed  the 
ice,  Mme.  Graslin  graciously  encouraged  M.  Roubaud  and 
drew  out  Gerard;  under  her  influence  all  these  different 
natures,  full  of  exquisite  qualities,  recognized  their  kinship. 
It  was  not  long  before  each  felt  himself  to  be  in  a  congenial 
atmosphere.  So  by  the  time  dessert  was  put  on  the  table, 
and  the  crystal  and  the  gilded  edges  of  the  porcelain  sparkled, 
when  choice  wines  were  set  in  circulation,  handed  to  the 
guests  by  Aline,  Maurice  Champion,  and  Grossetete's  man, 
the  conversation  had  become  more  confidential,  so  that  the 
four  noble  natures  thus  brought  together  by  chance  felt  free 
to  speak  their  real  minds  on  the  great  subjects  that  men  love 
to  discuss  in  good  faith. 

"Your  leave  of  absence  coincided  with  the  Revolution  of 
July,"  Grossetete  said,  looking  at  Gerard  in  a  way  that  asked 
his  opinion. 

"Yes,"  answered  the  engineer.  "I  was  in  Paris  during  the 
three  famous  days;  I  saw  it  all;  I  drew  some  disheartening 
conclusions." 

"What  were  they  ?"  M.  Bonnet  asked  quickly. 

"There  is  no  patriotism  left  except  under  the  workman's 
shirt,"  answered  Gerard.  "Therein  lies  the  ruin  of  France. 
The  Revolution  of  July  is  the  defeat  of  men  who  are  notable 


204  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

for  birth,  fortune,  and  talent,  and  a  defeat  in  which  they  ac- 
quiesce. The  enthusiastic  zeal  of  the  masses  has  gained  a 
victory  over  the  rich  and  intelligent  classes,  to  whom  zeal  and 
enthusiasm  is  antipathetic." 

"To  judge  by  last  year's  events,"  added  M.  Clousier,  "the 
change  is  a  direct  encouragement  to  the  evil  which  is  devour- 
ing us — to  Individualism.  In  fifty  years'  time  every  generous 
question  will  be  replaced  by  a  'What  is  that  to  me?'  the  watch- 
word of  independent  opinion  descended  from  the  spiritual 
heights  where  Luther,  Calvin,  Zwingle,  and  Knox  inau- 
gurated it,  till  even  in  political  economy  each  has  a  right  to 
his  own  opinion.  Each  for  himself!  Let  each  man  mind  his 
own  business! — these  two  terrible  phrases,  together  with  What 
is  that  to  me?  complete  a  trinity  of  doctrine  for  the  bour- 
geoisie and  the  peasant  proprietors.  This  egoism  is  the  result 
of  defects  in  our  civil  legislation,  somewhat  too  hastily  accom- 
plished in  the  first  instance,  and  now  confirmed  by  the  terrible 
consecration  of  the  Revolution  of  July." 

The  justice  relapsed  into  his  wonted  silence  again  with  this 
speech,  which  gave  the  guests  plenty  to  think  over.  Then 
M.  Bonnet  ventured  yet  further,  encouraged  by  Clousier's 
remarks,  and  by  a  glance  exchanged  between  Gerard  and 
Grossetete. 

"Good  King  Charles  X.,"  said  he,  "has  just  failed  in  the 
most  provident  and  salutary  enterprise  that  king  ever  under- 
took for  the  happiness  of  a  nation  intrusted  to  him.  The 
Church  should  be  proud  of  the  share  she  had  in  his  councils. 
But  it  was  the  heart  and  brain  of  the  upper  classes  which 
failed  him,  as  they  had  failed  before  over  the  great  question 
of  the  law  with  regard  to  the  succession  of  the  eldest  son,  the 
eternal  honor  of  the  one  bold  statesman  of  the  Restoration 
— the  Comte  de  Peyronnet.  To  reconstruct  the  nation  on 
the  basis  of  the  family,  to  deprive  the  press  of  its  power  to  do 
harm  without  restricting  its  usefulness,  to  confine  the  elective 
chamber  to  the  functions  for  which  it  was  really  intended, 
to  give  back  to  religion  its  influence  over  the  people, — such 
were  the  four  cardinal  points  of  the  domestic  policy  of  the 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  205 

House  of  Bourbon.  Well,  in  twenty  years'  time  all  France 
will  see  the  necessity  of  that  great  and  salutary  course.  King 
Charles  X.  was,  moreover,  more  insecure  in  the  position  which 
he  decided  to  quit  than  in  the  position  in  which  his  paternal 
authority  came  to  an  end.  The  future  history  of  our  fair 
country,  when  everything  shall  be  periodically  called  in  ques- 
tion, when  ceaseless  discussion  shall  take  the  place  of  action, 
when  the  press  shall  become  the  sovereign  power  and  the 
tool  of  the  basest  ambitions,  will  prove  the  wisdom  of  the 
king  who  has  just  taken  with  him  the  real  principles  of  gov- 
ernment. History  will  render  to  him  his  due  for  the  courage 
with  which  he  withstood  his  best  friends,  when  once  he  had 
probed  the  wound,  seen  its  extent,  and  the  pressing  necessity 
for  the  treatment,  which  has  not  been  continued  by  those 
for  whom  he  threw  himself  into  the  breach." 

"Well,  M.  le  Cure,  you  go  straight  to  the  point  without 
the  slightest  disguise,"  cried  M.  Gerard,  "but  I  do  not  say 
nay.  When  Napoleon  made  his  Russian  campaign  he  was 
forty  years  ahead  of  his  age;  he  was  misunderstood.  Eussia 
and  England,  in  1830,  can  explain  the  campaign  of  1812. 
Charles  X.  was  in  the  same  unfortunate  position ;  twenty-five 
years  hence  his  ordinances  may  perhaps  become  law." 

"France,  too  eloquent  a  country  not  to  babble,  too  vain- 
glorious to  recognize  real  ability,  in  spite  of  the  sublime  good 
sense  of  her  language  and  the  mass  of  her  people,  is  the  very 
last  country  in  which  to  introduce  the  system  of  two  delib- 
erating chambers,"  the  justice  of  the  peace  remarked.  "At 
any  rate,  not  without  the  admirable  safeguards  against  these 
elements  in  the  national  character,  devised  by  Napoleon's 
experience.  The  representative  system  may  work  in  a  country 
like  England,  where  its  action  is  circumscribed  by  the  nature 
of  the  soil ;  but  the  right  of  primogeniture,  as  applied  to  real 
estate,  is  a  necessary  part  of  it ;  without  this  factor,  the  repre- 
sentative system  becomes  sheer  nonsense.  England  owes  its 
existence  to  the  quasi-feudal  law  which  transmitted  the  house 
and  lands  to  the  oldest  son.  Russia  is  firmly  seated  on  the 
feudal  system  of  autocracy.  For  these  reasons,  both  nations 


206  THE  COUNTRY  i'ARSON 

at  the  present  day  are  making  alarming  progress.  Austria 
could  not  have  resisted  our  invasions  as  she  did,  nor  declared 
a  second  war  against  Napoleon,  had  it  not  been  for  the  law 
of  primogeniture,  which  preserves  the  strength  of  the  family 
and  maintains  production  on  the  large  scale  necessary  to 
the  State.  The  House  of  Bourbon,  conscious  that  Liberalism 
had  relegated  France  to  the  rank  of  a  third-rate  power  in 
Europe,  determined  to  regain  and  keep  their  place,  and  the 
country  shook  off  the  Bourbons  when  they  had  all  but  saved 
the  country.  I  do  not  know  how  deep  the  present  state  of 
things  will  sink  us." 

"If  there  should  be  a  war,"  cried  Grossetete,  "France  will 
be  without  horses,  as  Napoleon  was  in  1813,  when  he  was 
reduced  to  the  resources  of  France  alone,  and  could  not  make 
use  of  the  victories  of  Lutzen  and  Bautzen,  and  was  crushed 
at  Leipsic!  If  peace  continues,  the  evil  will  grow  worse: 
twenty  years  hence,  the  number  of  horned  cattle  and  horses 
in  France  will  be  diminished  by  one-half." 

"M.  Grossetete  is  right,"  said  Gerard. — "So  the  work  which 
you  have  decided  to  attempt  here  is  a  service  done  to  your 
country,  madarne,"  he  added,  turning  to  Veronique. 

"Yes,"  said  the  justice  of  the  peace,  '^because  Mme.  Graslin 
has  but  one  son.  But  will  this  chance  in  the  succession  repeat 
itself?  For  a  certain  time,  let  us  hope,  the  great  and  magnifi- 
cent scheme  of  cultivation  which  you  are  to  carry  into  effect 
will  be  in  the  hands  of  one  owner,  and  therefore  will  continue 
to  provide  grazing  land  for  horses  and  cattle.  But,  in  spite 
of  all,  a  day  will  come  when  forest  and  field  will  be  either 
divided  up  or  sold  in  lots.  Division  and  subdivision  will  fol- 
low, until  the  six  thousand  acres  of  plain  will  count  ten  or 
twelve  hundred  owners;  and  when  that  time  comes,  there  will 
be  no  more  horses  nor  prize  cattle." 

"Oh !  when  that  time  comes "  said  the  mayor. 

"There  is  a  What  is  that  to  me?"  cried  M.  Grossetete,  "and 
M.  Clousier  sounded  the  signal  for  it ;  he  is  caught  in  the  act. 
— But,  monsieur,"  the  banker  went  on  gravely,  addressing 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  207 

the  bewildered  mayor,  "the  time  has  come!  Round  about 
Paris  for  a  ten-league  radius,  the  land  is  divided  up  into  little 
patches  that  will  hardly  pasture  sufficient  milch  cows.  The 
commune  of  Argenteuil  numbers  thirty-eight  thousand  eight 
hundred  and  eighty-five  plots  of  land,  a  good  many  of  them 
bringing  in  less  than  fifteen  centimes  a  year !  If  it  were  not 
for  high  farming  and  manure  from  Paris,  which  gives  heavy 
crops  of  fodder  of  different  kinds,  I  do  not  know  how  cow- 
keepers  and  dairymen  would  manage.  As  it  is,  the  animals 
are  peculiarly  subject  to  inflammatory  diseases  consequent 
on  the  heating  diet  and  confinement  to  cowsheds.  They 
wear  out  their  cows  round  about  Paris  just  as  they  wear 
out  horses  in  the  streets.  Then  market-gardens,  orchards, 
nurseries,  and  vineyards  pay  so  much  better  than  pasture, 
that  the  grazing  land  is  gradually  diminishing.  A  few  years 
more,  and  milk  will  be  sent  in  by  express  to  Paris,  like  salt- 
fish,  and  what  is  going  on  round  Paris  is  happening  also  about 
all  large  towns.  The  evils  of  the  minute  subdivision  of  landed 
property  are  extending  round  a  hundred  French  cities;  some 
day  all  France  will  be  eaten  up  by  them. 

"In  1800,  according  to  Chaptal,  there  were  about  five  mill- 
ion acres  of  vineyard,  exact  statistics  would  show  fully  five 
times  as  much  to-day.  When  Normandy  is  split  up  into  an 
infinitude  of  small  holdings,  by  our  system  of  inheritance, 
fifty  per  cent  of  the  horse  and  cattle  trade  there  will  fall  off ; 
still  Normandy  will  have  the  monopoly  of  the  Paris  milk 
trade,  for  luckily  the  climate  will  not  permit  vine  culture. 
Another  curious  thing  to  notice  is  the  steady  rise  in  the  price 
of  butcher  meat.  In  1814,  prices  ranged  from  seven  to  eleven 
sous  per  pound;  in  1850,  twenty  years  hence,  Paris  will  pay 
twenty  sous,  unless  some  genius  is  raised  up  to  carry  out  the 
theories  of  Charles  X." 

<fYou  have  pointed  out  the  greatest  evil  in  France,"  said 
the  justice  of  the  peace.  "The  cause  of  it  lies  in  the  chapter 
Des  Successions  in  the  Civil  Code,  wherein  the  equal  division 
of  real  estate  among  the  children  of  the  family  is  required. 
That  is  the  pestle  which  is  constantly  grinding  the  country  to 


208  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

powder,  giving  to  every  one  but  a  life-interest  in  property 
which  cannot  remain  as  it  is  after  his  death.  A  continuous 
process  of  decomposition  (for  the  reverse  process  is  never  set 
up)  will  end  by  ruining  France.  The  French  Revolution 
generated  a  deadly  virus,  and  the  Days  of  July  have  set  the 
poison  working  afresh;  this  dangerous  germ  of  disease  is  the 
acquisition  of  land  by  peasants.  If  the  chapter  Des  Succes- 
sions is  the  origin  of  the  evil,  it  is  through  the  peasant  that 
it  reaches  its  worst  phase.  The  peasant  never  relinquishes 
the  land  he  has  won.  Let  a  bit  of  land  once  get  between  the 
ogre's  ever-hungry  jaws,  he  divides  and  subdivides  it  till  there 
are  but  strips  of  three  furrows  left.  Nay,  even  there  he  does 
not  stop !  he  will  divide  the  three  furrows  in  lengths.  The 
commune  of  Argenteuil,  which  M.  Grossetete  instanced  just 
now,  is  a  case  in  point.  The  preposterous  value  which  the 
peasants  set  on  the  smallest  scraps  of  land  makes  it  quite  im- 
possible to  reconstruct  an  estate.  The  law  and  procedure  are 
made  a  dead  letter  at  once  by  this  division,  and  ownership 
is  reduced  to  absurdity.  But  it  is  a  comparatively  trifling 
matter  that  the  minute  subdivision  of  the  law  should  paralyze 
the  treasury  and  the  law  by  making  it  impossible  to  carry  out 
its  wisest  regulations.  There  are  far  greater  evils  than  even 
these.  There  are  actually  landlords  of  property  bringing  in 
fifteen  and  twenty  centimes  per  annum  ! 

"Monsieur  has  just  said  something  about  the  falling  off  of 
cattle  and  horses,"  Clousier  continued,  looking  at  Grossetete ; 
"the  system  of  inheritance  counts  for  much  in  that  matter. 
The  peasant  proprietor  keeps  cows,  and  cows  only,  because 
milk  enters  into  his  diet;  he  sells  the  calves;  he  even  sells 
butter.  He  has  no  mind  to  raise  oxen,  still  less  to  breed 
horses ;  he  has  only  just  sufficient  fodder  for  a  year's  consump- 
tion; and  when  a  dry  spring  comes  and  hay  is  scarce,  he  is 
forced  to  take  his  cow  to  market ;  he  cannot  afford  to  keep  her. 
If  it  should  fall  out  so  unluckily  that  two  bad  hay  harvests 
came  in  succession,  you  would  see  some  strange  fluctuations 
in  the  price  of  beef  in  Paris,  and,  above  all,  in  veal,  when  the 
third  year  came." 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  209 

"And  how  would  they  do  for  'patriotic  banquets'  then?" 
asked  the  doctor,  smiling. 

"Ah !"  exclaimed  Mme.  Graslin,  glancing  at  Roubaud,  "so 
even  here,  as  everywhere  else,  politics  must  be  served  up  with 
journalistic  'items/  ': 

"In  this  bad  business  the  bourgeoisie  play  the  part  of  Amer- 
ican pioneers,"  continued  Clousier.  "They  buy  up  the  large 
estates,  too  large  for  the  peasant  to  meddle  with,  and  divide 
them.  After  the  bulk  has  been  cut  up  and  triturated,  a  forced 
sale  or  an  ordinary  sale  in  lots  hands  it  over  sooner  or  later 
to  the  peasant.  Everything  nowadays  is  reduced  to  figures, 
and  I  know  of  none  more  eloquent  than  these : — France  pos- 
sesses forty-nine  million  hectares  of  land ;  for  the  sake  of  con- 
venience, let  us  say  forty,  deducting  something  for  roads  and 
highroads,  dunes,  canals,  land  out  of  cultivation,  and  wastes 
like  the  plain  of  Montegnac,  which  need  capital.  Now,  out 
of  forty  million  hectares  to  a  population  of  thirty-two  mill- 
ions, there  are  a  hundred  and  twenty-five  million  parcels  of 
land,  according  to  the  land-tax  returns.  I  have  not  taken 
the  fractions  into  account.  So  we  have  outrun  the  Agrarian 
law,  and  yet  neither  poverty  nor  discord  are  at  an  end.  Then 
the  next  thing  will  be  that  those  who  are  turning  the  land 
into  crumbs  and  diminishing  the  output  of  produce,  will  find 
mouthpieces  for  the  cry  that  true  social  justice  only  permits 
the  usufruct  of  the  land  to  each.  They  will  say  that  owner- 
ship in  perpetuity  is  robbery.  The  Saint-Simonians  have 
begun  already." 

"There  spoke  the  magistrate,"  said  Grossetete,  "and  this  is 
what  the  banker  adds  to  his  bold  reflections.  When  landed 
property  became  tenable  by  peasants  and  small  shopkeepers, 
a  great  wrong  was  done  to  France,  though  the  Government 
does  not  so  much  as  suspect  it.  Suppose  that  we  set  down 
the  whole  mass  of  the  peasants  at  three  million  families, 
after  deducting  the  paupers.  Those  families  all  belong  to 
the  wage-earning  class.  Their  wages  are  paid  in  money  in- 
etead  of  in  kind — 

"There  is  another  Immense  blunder  in  our  legislation/' 


210  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

Clousier  cried,  breaking  in  on  the  banker.  "In  1790  it  might 
still  have  been  possible  to  pass  a  law  empowering  employers  to 
pay  wages  in  kind,  but  now — to  introduce  such  a  measure 
would  be  to  risk  a  Revolution." 

"In  this  way,"  Grossetete  continued,  "the  money  of  the 
country  passes  into  the  pockets  of  the  proletariat.  Now,  the 
peasant  has  one  passion,  one  desire,  one  determination,  one  aim 
in  life — to  die  a  landed  proprietor.  This  desire,  as  M.  Clousier 
has  very  clearly  shown,  is  one  result  of  the  Revolution — a 
direct  consequence  of  the  sale  of  the  national  lands.  Only 
those  who  have  no  idea  of  the  state  of  things  in  country  dis- 
tricts could  refuse  to  admit  that  each  of  those  three  million 
families  annually  buries  fifty  francs  as  a  regular  thing,  and 
in  this  way  a  hundred  and  fifty  millions  of  francs  are  with- 
drawn from  circulation  every  year.  The  science  of  political 
economy  has  reduced  to  an  axiom  the  statement  that  a  five- 
franc  piece,  if  it  passes  through  a  hundred  hands  in  the 
course  of  a  day,  does  duty  for  five  hundred  francs.  Now,  it  is 
certain  for  some  of  us  old  observers  of  the  state  of  things  in 
country  districts,  that  the  peasant  fixes  his  eyes  on  a  bit  of 
land,  keeps  ready  to  pounce  upon  it,  and  bides  his  time — 
meanwhile  he  never  invests  his  capital.  The  intervals  in  the 
peasant's  land-purchases  should,  therefore,  be  reckoned  at 
periods  of  seven  years.  For  seven  years,  consequently,  a 
capital  of  eleven  hundred  million  francs  is  lying  idle  in  the 
peasants'  hands ;  and  as  the  lower  middle  classes  do  the  same 
thing  to  quite  the  same  extent,  and  behave  in  the  same  way 
with  regard  to  land  on  too  large  a  scale  for  the  peasant  to 
nibble  at,  in  forty-two  years  France  loses  the  interest  on  two 
milliards  of  francs  at  least — that  is  to  say,  on  something  like 
a  hundred  millions  every  seven  }rears,  or  six  hundred  millions 
in  forty-two  years.  But  this  is  not  the  only  loss.  France  has 
failed  to  create  the  worth  of  six  hundred  millions  in  agricul- 
tural or  industrial  produce.  And  this  failure  to  produce  may 
be  taken  as  a  loss  of  twelve  hundred  million  francs;  for  if 
the  market  price  of  a  product  were  not  double  the  actual  cost 
of  production,  commerce  would  be  at  a  standstill.  The 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  211 

proletariat  deprives  itself  of  six  hundred  million  francs  of 
wages.  These  six  hundred  millions  of  initial  loss  that  repre- 
sent, for  an  economist,  twelve  hundred  millions  of  loss  of 
benefit  derived  from  circulation,  explain  how  it  is  that  our 
commerce,  shipping  trade,  and  agriculture  compare  so  badly 
with  the  state  of  things  in  England.  In  spite  of  the  differ- 
ences between  the  two  countries  (a  good  two-thirds  of  them, 
moreover,  in  our  favor),  England  could  mount  our  cavalry 
twice  over,  and  every  one  there  eats  meat.  But  then,  under 
the  English  system  of  land-tenure,  it  is  almost  impossible  for 
the  working  classes  to  buy  land,  and  so  all  the  money  is  kept 
in  constant  circulation.  So  besides  the  evils  of  comminu- 
tion of  the  land,  and  the  decay  of  the  trade  in  cattle,  horses, 
and  sheep,  the  chapter  Des  Successions  costs  us  a  further  loss 
of  six  hundred  million  francs  of  interest  on  the  capital  buried 
by  the  peasants  and  tradespeople,  or  twelve  hundred  million 
francs'  worth  of  produce  (at  the  least) — that  is  to  say,  a  total 
loss  of  three  milliards  of  francs  withdrawn  from  circulation 
every  half-century." 

"The  moral  effect  is  worse  than  the  material  effect !"  cried 
the  cure.  "We  are  turning  the  peasantry  into  pauper  land- 
owners, and  half  educating  the  lower  middle  classes.  It  will 
not  be  long  before  the  canker  of  Each  for  himself!  Let  each 
mind  his  own  business!  which  did  its  work  last  July  among 
the  upper  classes,  will  spread  to  the  middle  classes.  A 
proletariat  of  hardened  materialists,  knowing  no  God  but 
envy,  no  zeal  but  the  despair  of  hunger,  with  no  faith  nor 
belief  left,  will  come  to  the  front,  and  trample  the  heart  of 
the  country  under  foot.  The  foreigner,  waxing  great  under 
a  monarchical  government,  will  find  us  under  the  shadow  of 
royalty  without  the  reality  of  a  king,  without  law  under  the 
cover  of  legality,  owners  of  property  but  not  proprietors,  with 
.the  right  of  election  but  without  a  government,  listless 
holders  of  free  and  independent  opinions,  equal  but  equally 
unfortunate.  Let  us  hope  that  between  now  and  then  God 
will  raise  up  in  France  the  man  for  the  time,  one  of  those 
elect  who  breathe  a  new  spirit  into  a  nation,  a  man  who, 


212  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

whether  he  is  a  Sylla  or  a  Marius,  whether  he  comes  from  the 
heights  or  rises  from  the  depths,  will  reconstruct  society." 

"The  first  thing  to  do  will  be  to  send  him  to  the  Assizes 
or  to  the  police  court,"  said  Gerard.  "The  judgment  of 
Socrates  or  of  Christ  will  he  given  to  him,  here  in  1831,  as  of 
old  in  Attica  and  at  Jerusalem.  To-day,  as  of  old,  jealous 
mediocrity  allows  the  thinker  to  starve.  If  the  great  political 
physicians  who  have  studied  the  diseases  of  France,  and  are 
opposed  to  the  spirit  of  the  age,  should  resist  to  the  starva- 
tion-point, we  ridicule  them,  and  treat  them  as  visionaries. 
Here  in  France  we  revolt  against  the  sovereign  thinker,  the 
great  man  of  the  future,  just  as  we  rise  in  revolt  against  the 
political  sovereign." 

"But  in  those  old  times  the  Sophists  had  a  very  limited 
audience,"  cried  the  justice  of  the  peace;  "while  to-day, 
through  the  medium  of  the  periodical  press,  they  can  lead 
a  whole  nation  astray;  and  the  press  which  pleads  for 
common-sense  finds  no  echo  !" 

The  mayor  looked  at  M.  Clousier  with  intense  astonish- 
ment. Mme.  Graslin,  delighted  to  find  a  simple  justice  of  the 
peace  interested  in  such  grave  problems,  turned  to  her  neigh- 
bor M.  Roubaud  with,  "Do  you  know  M.  Clousier?" 

"Not  till  to-day !  Madame,  you  are  working  miracles,"  he 
added  in  her  ear.  "And  yet  look  at  his  forehead,  how  finely 
shaped  it  is !  It  is  like  the  classical  or  traditional  brow  that 
sculptors  gave  to  Lycurgus  and  the  wise  men  of  Greece,  is  it 
not  ? — Clearly  there  was  an  impolitic  side  to  the  Revolution  of 
July,"  he  added  aloud,  after  going  through  Grossetete  reason- 
ings. He  had  been  a  medical  student,  and  perhaps  would  have 
lent  a  hand  at  a  barricade. 

"'Twas  trebly  impolitic,"  said  Clousier.  "We  have  con- 
cluded the  case  for  law  and  finance,  now  for  the  Government. 
The  Royal  power,  weakened  by  the  dogma  of  the  national 
sovereignty,  in  virtue  of  which  the  election  was  made  on  the 
9th  of  August  1830,  will  strive  to  overcome  its  rival,  a  prin- 
ciple which  gives  the  people  the  right  of  changing  a  dynasty 
every  time  they  fail  to  apprehend  the  intentions  of  their  king; 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  213 

K>  there  is  a  domestic  struggle  before  us  which  will  check 
progress  in  France  for  a  long  while  yet." 

"England  has  wisely  steered  clear  of  all  these  sunken 
rocks,"  said  Gerard.  "I  have  been  in  England.  I  admire 
the  hive  which  sends  swarms  over  the  globe  to  settle  and  civ- 
ilize. In  England  political  debate  is  a  comedy  intended  to 
satisfy  the  people  and  to  hide  the  action  of  authority  which 
moves  untrammeled  in  its  lofty  sphere ;  election  there,  is  not, 
as  in  France,  the  referring  of  a  question  to  a  stupid  bour- 
geoisie. If  the  land  were  divided  up,  England  would  cease 
to  exist  at  once.  The  great  landowners  and  the  lords  control 
the  machinery  of  Government.  They  have  a  navy  which 
takes  possession  of  whole  quarters  of  the  globe  (and  under 
the  very  eyes  of  Europe)  to  fulfil  the  exigencies  of  their  trade, 
and  form  colonies  for  the  discontented  and  unsatisfactory. 
Instead  of  waging  war  on  men  of  ability,  annihilating  and 
underrating  them,  the  English  aristocracy  continually  seeks 
them  out,  rewards  and  assimilates  them.  The  English  are 
prompt  to  act  in  all  that  concerns  the  Government,  and  in 
the  choice  of  men  and  material,  while  with  us  action  of  any 
kind  is  slow ;  and  yet  they  are  slow,  and  we  impatient.  Cap- 
ital with  them  is  adventurous,  and  always  moving ;  with  us  it 
is  shy  and  suspicious.  Here  is  corroboration  of  M.  Grosse- 
tete's  statements  about  the  loss  to  industry  of  the  peasants' 
capital;  I  can  sketch  the  difference  in  a  few  words.  English 
capital,  which  is  constantly  circulating,  has  created  ten  mill- 
iards of  wealth  in  the  shape  of  expanded  manufactures  and 
joint-stock  companies  paying  dividends ;  while  here  in  France, 
though  we  have  more  capital,  it  has  not  yielded  one-tenth  part 
of  the  profit." 

"It  is  all  the  more  extraordinary,"  said  Roubaud,  "since 
that  they  are  lymphatic,  and  we  are  generally  either  sanguine 
or  nervous." 

"Here  is  a  great  problem  for  you  to  study,  monsieur,"  said 
Clousier.  "Given  a  national  temperament,  to  find  the  insti- 
tutions best  adapted  to  counteract  it.  Truly,  Cromwell  was 
a  great  legislator.  He,  one  man,  made  England  what  she  is 
IS 


214  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

by  promulgating  the  Act  of  Navigation,  which  made  the 
English  the  enemy  of  all  other  nations,  and  infused  into  them 
a  fierce  pride,  that  has  served  them  as  a  lever.  But  in  spite  of 
their  garrison  at  Malta,  as  soon  as  France  and  Russia  fully 
understand  the  part  to  be  played  in  politics  by  the  Black  Sea 
and  the  Mediterranean,  the  discovery  of  a  new  route  to  Asia 
by  way  of  Egypt  or  the  Euphrates  valley  will  be  a  death-blo\v 
to  England,  just  as  the  discovery  of  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope 
was  the  ruin  of  Venice." 

"And  nothing  of  God  in  all  this !"  cried  the  cure.  "M. 
Clousier  and  M.  Roubaud  are  indifferent  in  matters  of  re- 
ligion .  .  .  and  you,  monsieur  ?v  he  asked  questioningly, 
.  turning  to  Gerard. 

"A  Protestant,"  said  Grossetete. 

"You  guessed  rightly !"  exclaimed  Veronique,  with  a  glance 
at  the  cure  as  she  offered  her  hand  to  Clousier  to  return  to  her 
apartments. 

All  prejudices  excited  by  M.  Gerard's  appearance  quickly 
vanished,  and  the  three  notables  of  Montegnac  congratulated 
themselves  on  such  an  acquisition. 

"Unluckily,"  said  M.  Bonnet,  "there  is  a  cause  for  antago- 
nism between  Russia  and  the  Catholic  countries  on  the  shores 
of  the  Mediterranean ;  a  schism  •  of  little  real  importance 
divides  the  Greek  Church  from  the  Latin,  for  the  great  mis- 
fortune of  humanity." 

"Each  preaches  for  his  saint,"  said  Mme.  Graslin,  smiling. 
"M.  Grossetete  thinks  of  lost  milliards;  M.  Clousier  of  law 
in  confusion ;  the  doctor  sees  in  legislation  a  question  of  tem- 
peraments ;  M.  le  Cure  sees  in  religion  an  obstacle  in  the  way 
of  a  good  understanding  between  France  and  Russia." 

"Please  add,  madame,"  said  G6rard,  "that  in  the  sequestra- 
tion of  capital  by  the  peasant  and  small  tradesman,  I  see  the 
delay  of  the  completion  of  railways  in  France " 

"Then  what  would  you  have  ?"  asked  she. 

"Oh !  The  admirable  Councillors  of  State  who  devised 
laws  in  the  time  of  the  Emperor  and  the  Corps  Ugislatif, 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  215 

when  those  who  had  brains  as  well  as  those  who  had  property 
had  a  voice  in  the  election,  a  body  whose  sole  function  it  was 
to  oppose  unwise  laws  or  capricious  wars.  The  present  Cham- 
ber of  Deputies  is  like  to  end,  as  you  will  see,  by  becoming  the 
governing  body,  and  legalized  anarchy  it  will  be." 

"Great  heavens !"  cried  the  cure  in  an  access  of  lofty 
patriotism,  "how  is  it  that  minds  so  enlightened" — he  indi- 
cated Clousier,  Eoubaud,  and  Gerard — "see  the  evil,  and 
point  out  the  remedy,  and  do  not  begin  by  applying  it  to 
themselves  ?  All  of  you  represent  the  classes  attacked ;  all  of 
you  recognize  the  necessity  of  passive  obedience  on  the  part 
of  the  great  masses  in  the  State,  an  obedience  like  that  of 
the  soldier  in  time  of  war;  all  of  you  desire  the  unity  of 
authority,  and  wish  that  it  shall  never  be  called  in  question. 
But  that  consolidation  to  which  England  has  attained  through 
the  development  of  pride  and  material  interests '(which  are 
a  sort  of  belief)  can  only  be  attained  here  by  sentiments  in- 
duced by  Catholicism,  and  you  are  not  Catholics !  I  the 
priest  drop  my  character,  and  reason  with  rationalists. 

"How  can  you  expect  the  masses  to  become  religious  and 
to  obey  if  they  see  irreligion  and  relaxed  discipline  around 
them  ?  A  people  united  by  any  faith  will  easily  get  the  better 
of  men  without  belief.  The  law  of  the  interest  of  all,  which 
underlies  patriotism,  is  at  once  annulled  by  the  law  of 
individual  interest,  which  authorizes  and  implants  selfishness. 
Nothing  is  solid  and  durable  but  that  which  is  natural,  and 
the  natural  basis  of  politics  is  the  family.  The  family  should 
be  the  basis  of  all  institutions.  A  universal  effect  denotes  a 
co-extensive  cause.  These  things  that  you  notice  proceed 
from  the  social  principle  itself,  which  has  no  force,  because 
it  is  based  on  independent  opinion,  and  the  right  of  private 
judgment  is  the  forerunner  of  individualism.  There  is  less 
wisdom  in  looking  for  the  blessing  of  security  from  the  in- 
telligence and  capacity  of  the  majority,  than  in  depending 
upon  the  intelligence  of  institutions  and  the  capacity  of  one 
single  man  for  the  blessing  of  security.  It  is  easier  to  find 
wisdom  in  one  man  than  in  a  whole  nation.  The  peoples  have 


216  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

but  a  blind  heart  to  guide  them;  they  feel,  but  they  do  not 
see.  A  government  must  see,  and  must  not  be  swayed  by  sen- 
timents. There  is  therefore  an  evident  contradiction  between 
the  first  impulses  of  the  masses  and  the  action  of  authority 
which  must  direct  their  energy  and  give  it  unity.  To  find  a 
great  prince  is  a  great  chance  (to  use  your  language),  but  to 
trust  your  destinies  to  any  assembly  of  men,  even  if  they  are 
honest,  is  madness. 

"France  is  mad  at  this  moment !  Alas !  you  are  as  thor- 
oughly convinced  of  this  as  I.  If  all  men  who  really  believe 
what  they  say,  as  you  do,  would  set  the  example  in  their  own 
circle;  if  every  intelligent  thinker  would  set  his  hand  to 
raising  once  more  the  altars  of  the  great  spiritual  republic, 
of  the  one  Church  which  has  directed  humanity,  we  might 
see  once  more  in  France  the  miracles  wrought  there  by  our 
fathers."  ' 

"What  would  you  have,  M.  le  Cure  ?"  said  Gerard,  "if  one 
must  speak  to  you  as  in  the  confessional — I  look  on  faith  as 
a  lie  which  you  consciously  tell  yourself,  on  hope  as  a  lie 
about  the  future,  and  on  this  charity  of  yours  as  a  child's 
trick;  one  is  a  good  boy,  for  the  sake  of  the  jam." 

"And  yet,  monsieur,  when  hope  rocks  us  we  sleep  well," 
said  Mme.  Graslin. 

Eoubaud,  who  was  about  to  speak,  supported  by  a  glance 
from  Grossetete  and  the  cure,  stopped  short  at  the  words. 

"Is  it  any  fault  of  ours,"  said  Clousier,  "if  Jesus  Christ 
had  not  time  to  formulate  a  system  of  government  in  accord- 
ance with  His  teaching,  as  Moses  did  and  Confucius— the  two 
greatest  legislators  whom  the  world  has  seen,  for  the  Jews  and 
the  Chinese  still  maintain  their  national  existence,  though 
the  first  are  scattered  all  over  the  earth,  and  the  second  an 
isolated  people?" 

"Ah !  you  are  giving  me  a  task  indeed,"  said  the  cure  can- 
didly, "but  I  shall  triumph,  I  shall  convert  all  of  you.  .  .  . 
You  are  nearer  the  Faith  than  you  think.  Truth  lurks  be- 
neath the  lie ;  come  forward  but  a  step,  and  you  return !" 

And  with  this  cry  from  the  cure  the  conversation  took  a 
fresh  direction. 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  217 

The  next  morning  before  M.  Grossetete  went,  he  promised 
to  take  an  active  share  in  Veronique's  schemes  so  soon  as  they 
should  be  judged  practicable.  Mme.  Graslin  and  Gerard 
rode  beside  his  traveling  carriage  as  far  as  the  point  where 
the  cross-road  joined  the  highroad  from  Bordeaux  to  Lyons. 
Gerard  was  so  eager  to  see  the  place,  and  Veronique  so 
anxious  to  show  it  to  him,  that  this  ride  had  been  planned 
overnight.  After  they  took  leave  of  the  kind  old  man,  they 
galloped  down  into  the  great  plain  and  skirted  the  hillsides 
that  lay  between  the  chateau  and  the  Living  Rock.  The  sur- 
veyor recognized  the  rock  embankment  which  Farrabesche 
had  pointed  out;  it  stood  up  like  the  lowest  course  of  ma- 
sonry under  the  foundations  of  the  hills,  in  such  a  sort  that 
when  the  bed  of  this  indestructible  canal  of  nature^  making 
should  be  cleared  out,  and  the  water-courses  regulated  so  as 
not  to  choke  it,  irrigation  would  actually  be  facilitated  by 
that  long  channel  which  lay  about  ten  feet  above  the  surface 
of  the  plain.  The  first  thing  to  be  done  was  to  estimate  the 
volume  of  water  in  the  Gabou,  and  to  make  certain  that  the 
sides  of  the  valley  could  hold  it ;  no  decision  could  be  made  till 
this  was  known. 

Veronique  gave  a  horse  to  Farrabesche,  who  was  to  accom- 
pany Gerard  and  acquaint  him  with  the  least  details  which  he 
himself  had  observed.  After  some  days  of  consideration 
Gerard  thought  the  base  of  either  parallel  chains  of  hill  solid 
enough  (albeit  of  different  material)  to  hold  the  water. 

In  the  January  of  the  following  year,  a  wet  season,  Gerard 
calculated  the  probable  amount  of  water  discharged  by  the 
Gabou,  and  found  that  when  the  three  water-courses  had 
been  diverted  into  the  torrent,  the  total  amount  would  be  suf- 
ficient to  water  an  area  three  times  as  great  as  the  plain  of 
Montegnac.  The  dams  across  the  Gabou,  the  masonry  and 
engineering  works  needed  to  bring  the  water-supply  of  the 
three  little  valleys  into  the  plain,  should  not  cost  more  than 
sixty  thousand  francs;  for  the  surveyor  discovered  a  quantity 
of  chalky  deposit  on  the  common,  so  that  lime  would  be 
cheap,  and  the  forest  being  so  near  at  hand,  stone  and  timber 


218  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

would  cost  nothing  even  for  transport.  All  the  preparations 
could  be  made  before  the  Gabou  ran  dry,  so  that  when  the 
important  work  should  be  begun  it  should  quickly  be  finished. 
But  the  plain  was  another  matter.  Gerard  considered  that 
there  the  first  preparation  would  cost  at  least  two  hundred 
thousand  francs,  sowing  and  planting  apart. 

The  plain  was  to  be  divided  into  four  squares  of  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  acres  each.  There  was  no  question  of  breaking 
up  the  waste;  the  first  thing  to  do  was  to  remove  the  largest 
flints.  Navvies  would  be  employed  to  dig  a  great  number  of 
trenches  and  to  line  the  channels  with  stone  to  keep  the  water 
in.  for  the  water  must  be  made  to  flow  or  to  stand  as  required. 
All  this  work  called  for  active,  devoted,  and  painstaking 
workers.  Chance  so  ordered  it  that  the  plain  was  a  straight- 
forward piece  of  work,  a  level  stretch,  and  the  water  with 
a  ten-foot  fall  could  be  distributed  at  will.  There  was  nothing 
to  prevent  the  finest  results  in  farming  the  land;  here  there 
might  be  just  such  a  splendid  green  carpet  as  in  North  Italy, 
a  source  of  wealth  and  of  pride  to  Lombardy.  Gerard  sent  to 
his  late  district  for  an  old  and  experienced  foreman,  Fresquin 
by  name. 

Mme.  Graslin,  therefore,  wrote  to  ask  Grossetete  to  nego- 
tiate for  her  a  loan  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  francs 
on  the  security  of  her  Government  stock;  the  interest  of  six 
years,  Gerard  calculated,  should  pay  off  the  debt,  capital  and 
interest.  The  loan  was  concluded  in  the  course  of  the  month 
of  March;  and  by  that  time  Gerard,  with  Fresquin's  assist- 
ance, had  finished  all  the  preliminary  operations,  leveling, 
boring,  observations,  and  estimates.  The  news  of  the  great 
scheme  had  spread  through  the  country  and  roused  the  poor 
people;  and  the  indefatigable  Farrabesche,  Colorat,  Clousier, 
Roubaud,  and  the  Mayor  of  Montegnac,  all  those,  in  fact,  who 
were  interested  in  the  enterprise  for  its  own  sake  or  for  Mme. 
Graslin's,  chose  the  workers  or  gave  the  names  of  the  poor 
who  deserved  to  be  employed. 

Gerard  bought  partly  for  M.  Grossetete,  partly  on  his  own 
account,  some  thousand  acres  of  land  on  the  other  side  of  the 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  219 

road  through  Montegnac.  Fresquin,  his  foreman,  also  took 
five  hundred  acres,  and  sent  for  his  wife  and  children. 

In  the  early  days  of  April  1833,  M.  Grossetete  came  to 
Montegnac  to  see  the  land  purchased  for  him  by  Gerard ;  but 
the  principal  motive  of  his  journey  was  the  arrival  of  Cath- 
erine Curieux.  She  had  come  by  the  diligence  from  Paris  to 
Limoges,  and  Mme.  Graslin  was  expecting  her.  Grosse- 
tete found  Mme.  Graslin  about  to  start  for  the  church.  M. 
Bonnet  was  to  say  a  mass  to  ask  the  blessing  of  Heaven  on  the 
work  about  to  begin.  All  the  men,  women,  and  children 
were  present. 

M.  Grossetete  brought  forward  a  woman  of  thirty  or 
thereabouts,  who  looked  weak  and  out  of  health.  "Here  is 
your  protegee''  he  said,  addressing  Veronique. 

"Are  you  Catherine  Curieux?"  Mme.  Graslin  asked. 

"Yes,  madame." 

For  a  moment  Veronique  looked  at  her;  Catherine  was 
rather  tall,  shapely,  and  pale ;  the  exceeding  sweetness  of  her 
features  was  not  belied  by  the  beautiful  soft  gray  eyes.  In 
the  shape  of  her  face  and  the  outlines  of  her  forehead  there 
was  a  nobleness,  a  sort  of  grave  and  simple  majesty,  some- 
times seen  in  very  young  girls'  faces  in  the  country,  a  kind  of 
flower  of  beauty,  which  field  work,  and  the  constant  wear 
of  household  cares,  and  sunburn,  and  neglect  of  appearance, 
wither  with  alarming  rapidity.  From  her  attitude  as  she 
stood  it  was  easy  to  discern  that  she  would  move  with  the 
ease  of  a  daughter  of  the  fields  and  something  of  an  added 
grace,  unconsciously  learned  in  Paris.  If  Catherine  had 
never  left  the  Correze,  she  would  no  doubt  have  been  by  this 
time  a  wrinkled  and  withered  woman,  the  bright  tints  in  her 
face  would  have  grown  hard;  but  Paris,  which  had  toned 
down  the  high  color,  had  preserved  her  beauty ;  and  ill-health, 
weariness,  and  sorrow  had  given  to  her  the  mysterious  gifts 
of  melancholy  and  of  that  inner  life  of  thought  denied  to  poor 
toilers  in  the  field  who  lead  an  almost  animal  existence.  Her 
dress  likewise  marked  a  distinction  between  her  and  the 
peasants ;  for  it  abundantly  displayed  the  Parisian  taste  which 


220  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

even  the  least  coquettish  women  are  so  quick  to  acquire. 
Catherine  Curieux,  not  knowing  what  might  await  her,  and 
unable  to  judge  the  lady  in  whose  presence  she  stood,  seemed 
somewhat  embarrassed. 

"Do  you  still  love  Farrabesche  ?"  asked  Mme.  Graslin,  when 
Grossetete  left  the  two  women  together  for  a  moment. 

"Yes,  madame,"  she  answered,  flushing  red. 

"But  if  you  sent  him  a  thousand  francs  while  he  was  in 
prison,  why  did  you  not  come  to  him  when  he  came  out  ?  Do 
you  feel  any  repugnance  for  him  ?  Speak  to  me  as  you  would 
to  your  own  mother.  Were  you  afraid  that  he  had  gone 
utterly  to  the  bad  ?  that  he  cared  for  you  no  longer  ?" 

"No,  madame;  but  I  can  neither  read  nor  write.  I  was 
living  with  a  very  exacting  old  lady;  she  fell  ill;  we  sat  up 
with  her  of  a  night,  and  I  had  to  nurse  her.  I  knew  the  time 
was  coming  near  when  Jacques  would  be  out  of  prison,  but 
I  could  not  leave  Paris  until  the  lady  died.  She  left  me  noth- 
ing, after  all  my  devotion  to  her  and  her  interests.  I  had 
made  myself  ill  with  sitting  up  with  her  and  the  hard  work 
of  nursing,  and  I  wanted  to  get  well  again  before  I  came  back. 
I  spent  all  my  savings,  and  then  I  made  up  my  mind  to  go 
into  the  Hopital  Saint-Louis,  and  have  just  been  discharged 
as  cured." 

Mme.  Graslin  was  touched  by  an  explanation  so  simple. 

"Well,  but,  my  dear,"  she  said,  "tell  me  why  you  left  your 
people  so  suddenly;  what  made  you  leave  your  child?  why 
did  you  not  send  them  news  of  yourself,  or  get  some  one  to 
write ?" 

For  all  answer,  Catherine  wept. 

"Madame,"  she  said  at  last,  reassured  by  the  pressure  of 
Veronique's  hand,  "I  daresay  I  was  wrong,  but  it  was  more 
than  I  could  do  to  stop  in  the  place.  It  was  not  that  I  felt 
that  I  had  done  wrong ;  it  was  the  rest  of  them ;  I  was  afraid 
of  their  gossip  and  talk.  So  long  as  Jacques  was  here  in 
danger,  he  could  not  do  without  me;  but  when  he  was  gone, 
I  felt  as  if  I  could  not  stop.  There  was  I,  a  girl  with  a  child 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  2^1 

and  no  husband !  The  lowest  creature  would  have  been  better 
than  I.  If  I  had  heard  them  say  the  least  word  about  Benja- 
min or  his  father.,  I  do  not  know  what  I  should  have  done.  I 
should  have  killed  myself  perhaps,  or  gone  out  of  my  mind. 
My  own  father  or  mother  might  have  said  something  hasty  in 
a  moment  of  anger.  Meek  as  I  am,  I  am  too  irritable  to  bear 
hasty  words  or  insult.  I  have  been  well  punished;  I  could 
not  see  my  child,  and  never  a  day  passed  but  I  thought  of 
him !  I  wanted  to  be  forgotten,  and  forgotten  I  am.  No- 
body has  given  me  a  thought.  They  thought  I  was  dead,  and 
yet  many  and  many  a  time  I  felt  I  would  like  to  leave  every- 
thing to  have  one  day  here  and  see  my  little  boy " 

"Your  little  boy — see,  Catherine,  here  he  is !" 

Catherine  looked  up  and  saw  Benjamin,  and  something  like 
a  feverish  shiver  ran  through  her. 

"Benjamin,"  said  Mme.  Graslin,  "come  and  kiss  your 
mother." 

"My  mother?"  cried  Benjamin  in  amazement.  He  flung 
his  arms  round  Catherine's  neck,  and  she  clasped  him  to  her 
with  wild  energy.  But  the  boy  escaped,  and  ran  away  crying, 
"I  will  find  WTO /" 

Mme.  Graslin,  seeing  that  Catherine's  strength  was  failing, 
made  her  sit  down ;  and  as  she  did  so  her  eyes  met  M.  Bonnet's 
look,  her  color  rose,  for  in  that  keen  glance  her  confessor  read 
her  heart.  She  spoke  tremulously. 

"I  hope,  M.  le  Cure,"  she  said,  "that  you  will  marry  Cath- 
erine and  Farrabesche  at  once. — Do  you  not  remember  M. 
Bonnet,  my  child?  He  will  tell  you  that  Farrabesche  has 
behaved  himself  like  an  honest  man  since  he  came  back. 
Every  one  in  the  countryside  respects  him ;  if  there  is  a  place 
in  the  world  where  you  may  live  happily  with  the  good  opinion 
of  every  one  about  you,  it  is  here  in  Montegnac.  With  God's 
will,  you  will  make  your  fortune  here,  for  you  shall  be  my 
tenants.  Farrabesche  has  all  his  citizen's  rights  again." 

"This  is  all  true,  my  daughter,"  said  the  cure. 

As  he  spoke,  Farrabesche  came  in,  led  by  his  eager  son. 
Face  to  face  with  Catherine  in  Mme.  Graslin's  presence,  his 


222  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

face  grew  white,  and  he  was  mute.  He  saw  how  active  the 
kindness  of  the  one  had  been  for  him,  and  guessed  all  that 
the  other  had  suffered  in  her  enforced  absence.  Veronique 
turned  to  go  with  M.  Bonnet,  and  the  cure  for  his  part  wished 
to  take  Veronique  aside.  As  soon  as  they  were  out  of  hearing, 
Veronique's  confessor  looked  full  at  her  and  saw  her  color 
rise ;  she  lowered  her  eyes  like  a  guilty  creature. 

"You  are  degrading  charity,"  he  said  severely. 

"And  how  ?"  she  asked,  raising  her  head. 

"Charity,"  said  M.  Bonnet,  "is  a  passion  as  far  greater  than 
love,  as  humanity,  madame,  is  greater  than  one  human 
creature.  All  this  is  not  the  spontaneous  work  of  disinter- 
ested virtue.  You  are  falling  from  the  grandeur  of  the  ser- 
vice of  man  to  the  service  of  a  single  creature.  In  your  kind- 
ness to  Catherine  and  Farrabesche  there  is  an  alloy  of  memo- 
ries and  after-thoughts  which  spoils  it  in  the  sight  of  God. 
Pluck  out  the  rest  of  the  dart  of  the  spirit  of  evil  from  your 
heart.  Do  not  spoil  the  value  of  your  good  deeds  in  this  way. 
Will  you  ever  attain  at  last  to  that  holy  ignorance  of  the 
good  that  you  do,  which  is  the  supreme  grace  of  man's  ac- 
tions?" 

Mme.  Graslin  turned  away  to  dry  her  eyes.  Her  tears  told 
the  cure  that  his  words  had  reached  and  probed  some  un- 
healed  wound  in  her  heart.  Farrabesche,  Catherine,  and 
Benjamin  came  to  thank  their  benefactress,  but  she  made  a 
sign  to  them  to  go  away  and  leave  her  with  M.  Bonnet. 

"You  see  how  I  have  hurt  them,"  she  said,  bidding  him  see 
their  disappointed  faces.  And  the  tender-hearted  cure  beck- 
oned to  them  to  come  back. 

"You  must  be  completely  happy,"  she  said. — "Here  is  the 
patent  which  gives  you  back  all  your  rights  as  a  citizen,  and 
exempts  you  from  the  old  humiliating  formalities,"  she 
added,  holding  out  to  Farrabesche  a  paper  which  she  had  kept. 
Farrabesche  kissed  Veronique's  hand.  There  was  an  expres- 
sion of  submissive  affection  and  quiet  devotion  in  his  eyes, 
the  devotion  which  nothing  could  change,  the  fidelity  of  a  dog 
for  his  master. 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  223 

"If  Jacques  has  suffered  much,  madame,  I  hope  that  it 
be  possible  for  me  to  make  up  to  him  in  happiness  for 
the  trouble  he  has  been  through,"  said  Catherine;  "for  what- 
ever he  may  have  done,  he  is  not  bad." 

Mme.  Graslin  turned  away  her  head.  The  sight  of  their 
happiness  seemed  to  crush  her.  M.  Bonnet  left  her  to  go  to 
the  church,  and  she  dragged  herself  thither  on  M.  Grosse- 
tete's  arm. 

After  breakfast,  every  one  went  to  see  the  work  begun. 
All  the  old  people  of  Montegnac  were  likewise  present.  Ve- 
ronique  stood  between  M.  Grossetete  and  M.  Bonnet  on  the 
top  of  the  steep  slope  which  the  new  road  ascended,  whence 
they  could  see  the  alignment  of  the  four  new  roads,  which 
served  as  a  deposit  for  the  stones  taken  off  the  land.  Five 
navvies  were  clearing  a  space  of  eighteen  feet  (the  width  of 
each  road),  and  throwing  up  a  sort  of  embankment  of  good 
soil  as  they  .worked.  Four  men  on  either  side  were  engaged 
in  making  a  ditch,  and  these  also  made  a  bank  of  fertile 
earth  along  the  edge  of  the  field.  Behind  them  came  two 
men,  who  dug  holes  at  intervals,  and  planted  trees.  In  each 
division,  thirty  laborers  (chosen  from  among  the  poor), 
twenty  women,  and  forty  girls  and  children,  eighty-six 
workers  in  all,  were  busy  piling  up  the  stones  which  the 
workmen  riddled  out  along  the  bank  so  as  to  measure  the 
quantity  produced  by  each  group.  In  this  way  all  went 
abreast,  and  with  such  picked  and  enthusiastic  workers  rapid 
progress  was  being  made.  Grossetete  promised  to  send  some 
trees,  and  to  ask  for  more,  among  Mme.  Graslin's  friends. 
It  was  evident  that  there  would  not  be  enough  in  the  nursery 
plantations  at  the  chateau  to  supply  such  a  demand. 

Towards  the  end  of  the  day,  which  was  to  finish  with  a 
great  dinner  at  the  chateau,  Farrabesche  begged  to  speak 
with  Mme.  Graslin  for  a  moment.  Catherine  came  with 
him. 

"Madame,"  he  said,  "you  were  so  kind  as  to  promise  me 
the  home  farm.  You  meant  to  help  me  to  a  fortune  when 
you  granted  me  such  a  favor,  but  I  have  come  round  to 


224  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

Catherine's  ideas  about  our  future.  If  I  did  well  there, 
there  would  be  jealousy;  a  word  is  soon  said;  I  might  find 
things  unpleasant,  I  am  afraid,  and  besides,  Catherine  would 
never  feel  comfortable;  it  would  be  better  for  us  to  keep  to 
ourselves,  in  fact.  So  I  have  come  just  to  ask  you  if  you 
will  give  us  the  land  about  the  mouth  of  the  Gabou,  near 
the  common,  to  farm  instead,  and  a  little  bit  of  the  wood 
yonder  under  the  Living  Rock.  You  will  have  a  lot  of  work- 
men thereabouts  in  July,  and  it  would  be  easy  then  to  build 
a  farmhouse  on  a  knoll  in  a  good  situation.  We  should  be 
very  happy.  I  would  send  for  Guepin,  poor  fellow,  when  he 
comes  out  of  prison;  he  would  work  like  a  horse,  and  it  is 
likely  I  might  find  a  wife  for  him.  My  man  is  no  do-nothing. 
No  one  will  come  up  there  to  stare  at  us;  we  will  colonize 
thai  bit  of  land,  and  it  will  be  my  great  ambition  to  make  a 
famous  farm  for  you  there.  Besides,  I  have  come  to  suggest 
a  tenant  for  your  great  farm — a  cousin  of  Catherine's,  who 
has  a  little  money  of  his  own ;  he  will  be  better  able  than  I 
to  look  after  such  a  big  concern  as  that.  In  five  years'  time, 
please  God,  you  will  have  five  or  six  thousand  head  of  cattle 
or  horses  down  there  in  the  plain  that  they  are  breaking  up, 
and  it  will  really  take  a  good  head  to  look  after  it  all." 

Mme.  Graslin  recognized  the  good  sense  of  Farrabesche's 
request,  and  granted  it. 

As  soon  as  the  beginning  was  made  in  the  plain,  Mme. 
Graslin  fell  into  the  even  ways  of  a  country  life.  She  went 
to  mass  in  the  morning,  watched  over  the  education  of  the 
son  whom  she  idolized,  and  went  to  see  her  workmen.  After 
dinner  she  was  at  home  to  her  friends  in  the  little  drawing- 
room  on  the  first  floor  of  the  centre  tower.  She  taught  Rou- 
baud.  Clousier,  and  the  cure  whist — Gerard  knew  the  game 
already — and  when  the  party  broke  up  towards  nine  o'clock, 
every  one  went  home.  The  only  events  in  the  pleasant  life 
were  the  successes  of  the  different  parts  of  the  great  enter- 
prise. 

June  came,  the  bed  of  the  Gabou  was  dry,  Gerard  had 
taken  up  his  quarters  in  the  old  keeper's  cottage ;  for  Farra- 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  225 

besche's  farmhouse  was  finished  by  this  time,  and  fifty  masons, 
returned  from  Paris,  were  building  a  wall  across  the  valley 
from  side  to  side.  The  masonry  was  twenty  feet  thick  at 
the  base,  gradually  sloping  away  to  half  that  thickness  at  the 
top,  and  the  whole  length  of  it  was  embedded  in  twelve  feet 
of  solid  concrete.  On  the  side  of  the  valley  Gerard  added  a 
course  of  concrete  with  a  sloping  surface  twelve  feet  thick  at 
the  base,  and  a  similar  support  on  the  side  nearest  the  com- 
mons, covered  with  leaf-mould  several  feet  deep,  made  a  sub- 
stantial barrier  which  the  flood  water  could  not  break  through. 
In  case  of  a  very  wet  season,  Gerard  contrived  a  channel  at  a 
suitable  height  for  the  overflow.  Everywhere  the  masonry 
was  carried  down  on  the  solid  rock  (granite,  or  tufa),  that 
the  water  might  not  escape  at  the  sides.  By  the  middle  of 
August  the  dam  was  finished.  Meanwhile,  Gerard  also  pre- 
pared three  channels  in  the  three  principal  valleys,  and  all  of 
the  undertakings  cost  less  than  the  estimate.  In  this  way 
the  farm  by  the  chateau  could  be  put  in  working  order. 

The  irrigation  channels  in  the  plain  under  Fresquin's  su- 
perintendence corresponded  with  the  natural  canal  at  the 
base  of  the  hills ;  all  the  water-courses  departed  thence.  The 
great  abundance  of  flints  enabled  him  to  pave  all  the  chan- 
nels, and  sluices  were  constructed  so  that  the  water  might  be 
kept  at  the  required  height  in  them. 

Every  Sunday  after  mass  Veronique  went  down  through 
the  park  with  Gerard  and  the  cure,  the  doctor,  and  the  mayor, 
to  see  how  the  system  of  water  supply  was  working.  The 
winter  of  1833-1834  was  very  wet.  The  water  from  the  three 
streams  had  been  turned  into  the  torrent,  and  the  flood  had 
made  the  valley  of  the  Gabou  into  three  lakes,  arranged  of 
set  design  one  above  the  other,  so  as  to  form  a.  reserve  for 
times  of  great  drought.  In  places  where  the  valley  widened 
out,  Gerard  had  taken  advantage  of  one  or  two  knolls  to 
make  an  island  here  and  there,  and  to  plant  them  with  dif- 
ferent trees.  This  vast  engineering  operation  had  completely 
altered  the  appearance  of  the  landscape,  but  it  would  still  be 
five  or  six  years  before  it  would  take  its  true  character. 


226  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

"The  land  was  quite  naked,"  Farrabesche  .used  to  say,  "and 
now  madame  has  clothed  it."  After  all  these  great  changes, 
every  one  spoke  of  Veronique  as  "madame"  in  the  country- 
side. When  the  rains  ceased  in  June  1834,  trial  was  made  of 
the  irrigation  system  in  the  part  of  the  plain  where  seed  had 
been  sown;  and  the  green  growth  thus  watered  was  of  the 
same  fine  quality  as  in  an  Italian  marcita,  or  a  Swiss  meadow. 
The  method  in  use  on  farms  in  Lombardy  had  been  em- 
ployed ;  the  whole  surface  was  kept  evenly  moist,  and  the  plain 
was  as  even  as  a  carpet.  The  nitre  in  the  snow,  dissolved  in 
the  water,  doubtless  contributed  not  a  little  to  the  fineness  of 
the  grass.  Gerard  hoped  that  the  produce  would  be  some- 
thing like  that  of  Switzerland,  where,  as  is  well  known,  this 
substance  is  an  inexhaustible  source  of  riches.  The  trees 
planted  along  the  roadsides,  drawing  water  sufficient  from 
the  ditches,  made  rapid  progress.  So  it  came  to  pass  that  in 
1838,  five  years  after  Mme.  Graslin  came  to  Montegnac,  the 
waste  land,  condemned  as  sterile  by  twenty  generations,  was 
a  green  and  fertile  plain,  the  whole  of  it  under  cultivation. 

Gerard  had  built  houses  for  five  farms,  besides  the  large 
one  at  the  chateau ;  Gerard's  farm,  like  Grossetete's  and  Fres- 
quin's,  received  the  overflow  from  Mme.  Graslin's  estate ;  they 
were  conducted  on  the  same  methods,  and  laid  out  on  the  same 
lines.  Gerard  built  a  charming  lodge  on  his  own  property. 

When  all  was  finished,  the  township  of  Montegnac  acted 
on  the  suggestion  of  its  mayor,  who  was  delighted  to  resign 
his  office  to  Gerard,  and  the  surveyor  became  mayor  in  his 
stead. 

In  1840  the  departure  of  the  first  herd  of  fat  cattle  sent 
from  Montegnac  to  the  Paris  markets  was  an  occasion  for  a 
rural  fete.  .  Cattle  and  horses  were  raised  on  the  farms  ITT 
the  plain;  for  when  the  ground  was  cleared,  seven  inches  of 
mould  were  usually  found,  which  were  manured  by  pasturing 
cattle  on  them,  and  continually  enriched  by  the  leaves  that 
fell  every  autumn  from  the  trees,  and,  first  and  foremost,  by 
the  melted  snow-water  from  the  reservoirs  in  the  Gabou. 

It  was  in  this  year  that  Mme.  Graslin  decided  that  a  tutor 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  227 

must  be  found  for  her  son,  now  eleven  years  old.  She  was 
unwilling  to  part  with  him,  and  yet  desired  to  make  a  well- 
educated  man  of  her  boy.  M.  Bonnet  wrote  to  the  seminary. 
Mme.  Graslin,  on  her  side,  let  fall  a  few  words  concerning 
her  wishes  and  her  difficulty  to  Monseigneur  Dutheil,  recently 
appointed  to  an  archbishopric.  It  was  a  great  and  serious 
matter  to  make  choice  of  a  man  who  must  spend  at  least  nine 
months  out  of  twelve  at  the  chateau.  Gerard  had  offered 
already  to  ground  his  friend  Francis  in  mathematics,  but  it 
was  impossible  to  do  without  a  tutor ;  and  this  choice  that  she 
must  make  was  the  more  formidable  to  Mme.  Graslin,  because 
she  knew  that  her  health"  was  giving  way.  As  the  value  of 
the  land  in  her  beloved  Montegnac  increased,  she  redoubled 
the  secret  austerities  of  her  life. 

Monseigneur  Dutheil,  with  whom  Mme.  Graslin  still  cor- 
responded, found  her  the  man  for  whom  she  wished.  He 
sent  a  schoolmaster  named  Kuffin  from  his  own  diocese.  Kuf- 
fin  was  a  young  man  of  five-and-twenty  with  genius  for  pri- 
vate teaching;  he  was  widely  read;  in  spite  of  an  excessive 
sensibility,  could,  when  necessary,  show  himself  sufficiently 
severe  for  the  education  of  a  child,  nor  was  his  piety  in  any 
way  prejudicial  to  his  knowledge ;  finally,  he  was  patient  and 
pleasant-looking. 

"This  is  a  real  gift  which  I  am  sending  you,  my  dear 
daughter,"  so  the  Archbishop  wrote;  "the  young  man  is 
worthy  to  be  the  tutor  of  a  prince,  so  I  count  upon  you  to  se- 
cure his  future,  for  he  will  be  your  son's  spiritual  father." 

M.  Euffin  was  so  much  liked  by  Mme.  Graslin's  little, 
circle  of  faithful  friends,  that  his  coming  made  no  change 
in  the  various  intimacies  of  those  who,  grouped  about  their 
idol,  seized  with  a  sort  of  jealousy  on  the  hours  and  moments 
spent  with  her. 

The  year  1843  saw  the  prosperity  of  Montegnac  increasing 
beyond  all  hopes.  The  farm  on  the  Gabou  rivaled  the  farms 
on  the  plain,  and  the  chateau  led  the  way  in  all  improve- 


228  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

raents.  The  five  other  farms,  which  by  the  terms  of  the  lease 
paid  an  increasing  rent,  and  would  each  bring  in  the  sum  of 
thirty  thousand  francs  in  twelve  years'  time,  then  brought  in 
sixty  thousand  francs  a  year  all  told.  The  farmers  were  just 
beginning  to  reap  the  benefits  of  their  self-denial  and  Mme. 
Graslin's  sacrifices,  and  could  afford  to  manure  the  meadows 
in  the  plain  where  the  finest  crops  grew  without  fear  of  dry 
seasons.  The  Gabou  farm  paid  its  first  rent  of  four  thou- 
sand francs  joyously. 

It  was  in  this  year  that  a  man  in  Montegnac  started  a 
diligence  between  the  chief  town  in  the  arrondissement  and 
Limoges ;  a  coach  ran  either  way  daily.  M.  Clousier's  nephew 
sold  his  clerkship  and  obtained  permission  to  practice  as  a 
notary,  and  Fresquin  was  appointed  to  be  tax-collector  in  the 
canton.  Then  the  new  notary  built  himself  a  pretty  house 
in  upper  Montegnac,  planted  mulberry  trees  on  his  land,  and 
became  Gerard's  deputy.  And  Gerard  himself,  grown  bold 
with  success,  thought  of  a  plan  which  was  to  bring  Mme. 
Graslin  a  colossal  fortune ;  for  this  year  she  paid  off  her  loan, 
and  began  to  receive  interest  from  her  investment  in  the 
funds.  This  was  Gerard's  scheme:  He  would  turn  the  little 
river  into  a  canal,  by  diverting  the  abundant  water  of  the 
Gabon  into  it.  This  canal  should  effect  a  junction  with  the 
Vienne,  and  in  this  way  it  would  be  possible  to  exploit  twenty 
thousand  acres  of  the  vast  forest  of  Montegnac.  The  woods 
were  admirably  superintended  by  Colorat,  but  hitherto  had 
brought  in  nothing  on  account  of  the  difficulty  of  transport. 
With  this  arrangement  it  would  be  possible  to  fell  a  thousand 
acres  every  year  (thus  dividing  the  forest  into  twenty  strips 
for  successive  cuttings),  and  the  valuable  timber  for  build- 
ing purposes  could  be  sent  by  water  to  Limoges.  This  had 
been  Graslin's  plan;  he  had  scarcely  listened  to  the  cuiv's 
projects  for  the  plain,  he  was  far  more  interested  in  the 
scheme  for  making  a  canal  of  the  little  river. 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  229 

V 

IS  LAID  IN  THE  TOMB 

IN  the  beginning  of  the  following  year,  in  spite  of  Mme. 
Graslin's  bearing,  her  friends  saw  warning  signs  that  death 
was  near.  To  all  Boubaud's  observations,  as  to  the  utmost 
ingenuity  of  the  keen-sighted  questioners,  Veronique  gave  but 
one  answer,  "She  felt  wonderfully  well."  Yet  that  spring, 
when  she  revisited  forest  and  farms  and  her  rich  meadows, 
it  was  with  a  childlike  joy  that  plainly  spoke  of  sad  forebod- 
ings. 

Gerard  had  been  obliged  to  make  a  low  wall  of  concrete 
from  the  dam  across  the  Gabou  to  the  park  at  Montegnac 
along  the  base  of  the  lower  slope  of  the  hill  of  the  Correze; 
this  had  suggested  an  idea  to  him.  He  would  enclose  the 
whole  forest  of  Montegnac,  and  throw  the  park  into  it.  Mme. 
Graslin  put  by  thirty  thousand  .francs  a  year  for  this  purpose. 
It  would  take  seven  years  to  complete  the  wall;  but  when  it 
was  finished,  the  splendid  forest  would  be  exempted  from  the 
dues  claimed  by  the  Government  over  unenclosed  woods  and 
lands,  and  the  three  ponds  in  the  Gabou  valley  would  lie 
within  the  circuit  of  the  park.  Each  of  the  ponds,  proudly 
dubbed  "a  lake,"  had  its  island.  This  year,  too,  Gerard,  in 
concert  with  Grossetete,  prepared  a  surprise  for  Mme.  Gras- 
lin's birthday;  he  had  built  on  the  second  and  largest  island 
a  little  Chartreuse — a  summer-house,  satisfactorily  rustic 
without,  and  perfectly  elegant  within.  The  old  banker  was 
in  the  plot,  so  were  Farrabesche,  Fresquin,  and  Clousier's 
nephew,  and  most  of  the  well-to-do  folk  in  Montegnac. 
Grossetete  sent  the  pretty  furniture.  The  bell  tower,  copied 
from  the  tower  of  Vevay,  produced  a  charming  effect  in  the 
landscape.  Six  boats  (two  for  each  lake)  had  been  secretly 
built,  rigged,  and  painted  during  the  winter  by  Farrabesche 
and  Guepin,  with  some  help  from  the  village  carpenter  at 
Montegnac. 

So  one  morning  in  the  middle  of  May,  after  Mme.  Graslin's 
16 


&0  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

friends  had  breakfasted  with  her,  they  led  her  out  into  the 
park,  which  Gerard  had  managed  for  the  last  five  years  as 
architect  and  naturalist.  It  had  been  admirably  laid  out, 
sloping  down  towards  the  pleasant  meadows  in  the  Gabou  val- 
ley, where  below,  on  the  first  lake,  two  boats  were  in  readiness 
for  them.  The  meadowland,  watered  by  several  clear  streams, 
had  been  taken  in  at  the  base  of  the  great  amphitheatre  at 
the  head  of  the  Gabou  valley.  The  woods  round  about  them 
had  been  carefully  thinned  and  disposed  with  a  view  to  the 
effect;  here  the  shapeliest  masses  of  trees,  there  a  charming 
inlet  of  meadow;  there  was  an  air  of  loneliness  about  the 
forest-surrounded  space  which  soothed  the  soul. 

On  a  bit  of  rising  ground  by  the  lake  Gerard  had  carefully 
reproduced  the  chalet  which  all  travelers  see  and  admire  on 
the  road  to  Brieg  through  the  Rhone  valley.  This  was  to  be 
the  chateau,  dairy,  and  cowshed.  From  the  balcony  there 
was  a  view  over  this  landscape  created  by  the  engineer's  art, 
a  view  comparable,  since  the  lakes  had  been  made,  to  the  love- 
liest Swiss  scenery. 

It  was  a  glorious  day.  Not  a  cloud  in  the  blue  sky,  and 
on  the  earth  beneath,  the  myriad  gracious  chance  effects  that 
the  fair  May  month  can  give.  Light  wreaths  of  mist,  risen 
from  the  lake,  still  hung  like  a  thin  smoke  about  the  trees  by 
the  water's  edge — willows  and  weeping  willows,  ash  and  alder 
and  abeles,  Lombard  and  Canadian  poplars,  white  and  pink 
hawthorn,  birch  and  acacia,  had  been  grouped  about  the  lake, 
as  the  nature  of  the  ground  and  the  trees  themselves  (all 
finely-grown  specimens  now  ten  years  old)  suggested.  The 
high  green  wall  of  forest  trees  was  reflected  in  the  sheet  of 
water,  clear  as  a  mirror,  and  serene  as  the  sky ;  their  topmost 
crests,  clearly  outlined  in  that  limpid  atmosphere,  stood  out 
in  contrast  with  the  thickets  below  them,  veiled  in  delicate 
green  undergrowth.  The  lakes,  divided  by  strongly-built 
embankments  with  a  causeway  along  them  that  served  as  a 
short  cut  from  side  to  side  of  the  valley,  lay  like  three  mirrors, 
each  with  a  different  reflecting  surface,  the  water  trickling 
from  one  to  another  in  musical  cascades.  And  beyond  this, 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  231 

from  the  chalet  you  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  bleak  and  barren 
common  lands,  the  pale  chalky  soil  (seen  from  the  balcony) 
looked  like  a  wide  sea,  and  supplied  a  contrast  with  the  fresh 
greenery  about  the  lake.  Veronique  saw  the  gladness  in  her 
friends'  faces  as  their  hands  were  held  out  to  assist  her  to 
enter  the  larger  boat,  tears  rose  to  her  eyes,  and  they  rowed 
on  in  silence  until  they  reached  the  first  causeway.  Here  they 
landed,  to  embark  again  on  the  second  lake;  and  Veronique, 
looking  up,  saw  the  summer-house  on  the  island,  and  Grosse- 
tete  and  his  family  sitting  on  a  bench  before  it. 

"They  are  determined  to  make  me  regret  life,  it  seems," 
she  said,  turning  to  the  cure. 

"We  want  to  keep  you  among  us,"  Clousier  said. 

"There  is  no  putting  life  into  the  dead,"  she  answered ;  but 
at  M.  Bonnet's  look  of  rebuke,  she  withdrew  into  herself 
again. 

"Simply  let  me  have  the  charge  of  your  health,"  pleaded 
Eoubaud  in  a  gentle  voice ;  "I.  am  sure  that  I  could  preserve 
her  who  is  the  living  glory  of  the  canton,  the  common  bond 
that  unites  the  lives  of  all  our  friends." 

Veronique  bent  her  head,  while  Gerard  rowed  slowly  out 
towards  the  island  in  the  middle  of  the  sheet  of  water,  the 
largest  of  the  three.  The  upper  lake  chanced  to  be  too  full : 
the  distant  murmur  of  the  weir  seemed  to  find  a  voice  for  the 
lovely  landscape. 

"You  did  well  indeed  to  bring  me  here  to  bid  farewell  to 
this  entrancing  view !"  she  said,  as  she  saw  the  beauty  of  the 
trees  so  full  of  leaves  that  they  hid  the  bank  on  either  side. 

The  only  sign  of  disapprobation  which  Veronique's  friends 
permitted  themselves  was  a  gloomy  silence;  and,  at  a  second 
glance  from  M.  Bonnet,  she  sprang  lightly  from  the  boat  with 
an  apparent  gaiety,  which  she  sustained.  Once  more  she  be- 
came the  lady  of  the  manor,  and  so  charming  was  she,  that 
the  Grossetete  family  thought  that  they  saw  in  her  the  beau- 
tiful Mme.  Graslin  of  old  days. 

"Assuredly,  you  may  live  yet,"  her  mother  said  in  Vero- 
nique's ear. 


232  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

On  that  pleasant  festival  day,  in  the  midst  of  a  scene  sub- 
limely transformed  by  the  use  of  nature's  own  resources,  how- 
should  anything  wound  Veronique  ?  Yet  then  and  there  she 
received  her  death-blow. 

It  had  been  arranged  that  the  party  should  return  home 
towards  nine  o'clock  by  way  of  the  meadows;  for  the  roads, 
quite  as  fine  as  any  in  England  or  Italy,  were  the  pride  of 
their  engineer.  There  were  flints  in  abundance ;  as  the  stones 
were  taken  off  the  land  they  had  been  piled  in  heaps  by  the 
roadside;  and  with  such  plenty  of  road  metal,  it  was  so  easy 
to  keep  the  ways  in  good  order,  that  in  five  years'  time  they 
were  in  a  manner  macadamized.  Carriages  were  waiting 
for  the  party  at  the  lower  end  of  the  valley  nearest  the  plain, 
almost  under  the  Living  Eock.  The  horses  had  all  been  bred 
in  Montegnac.  Their  trial  formed  part  of  the  programme  for 
the  day ;  for  these  were  the  first  that  were  ready  for  sale,  the 
manager  of  the  stud  having  just  sent  ten  of  them  up  to  the 
stables  of  the  chateau.  Four  handsome  animals  in  light  and 
plain  harness  were  to  draw  Mme.  Graslin's  caleche,  a  present 
from  Grossetete. 

After  dinner  the  joyous  company  went  to  take  coffee  on  a 
promontory  where  a  little  wooden  kiosk  had  been  erected,-  a 
copy  of  one  on  the  shores  of  the  Bosphorus.  From  this  point 
there  was  a  wide  outlook  over  the  lowest  lake,  stretching  away 
to  the  great  barrier  across  the  Gabou,  now  covered  thickly 
with  a  luxuriant  growth  of  green,  a  charming  spot  for  the 
eyes  to  rest  upon.  Colorat's  house  and  the  old  cottage,  now 
restored,  were  the  only  buildings  in  the  landscape;  Colorat's 
capacities  were  scarcely  adequate  for  the  difficult  post  of  head 
forester  in  Montegnac,  so  he  had  succeeded  to  Farrabesche's 
office. 

From  this  point  Mme.  Graslin  fancied  that  she  could  see 
Francis  near  Farrabesche's  nursery  of  saplings;  she  looked 
for  the  child,  and  could  not  find  him,  till  M.  Ruffin  pointed 
him  out,  playing  on  the  brink  of  the  lake  with  M.  Grosse- 
tete's  great-grandchildren.  Veronique  felt  afraid  that  some 
accident  might  happen,  and  without  listening  to  remon- 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  233 

strances,  sprang  into  one  of  the  boats,  landed  on  the  cause- 
way, and  herself  hurried  away  in  search  of  her  son.  This 
little  incident  broke  up  the  party  on  the  island.  Grossetete, 
now  a  venerable  great-grandfather,  was  the  first  to  suggest  a 
walk  along  the  beautiful  field  path  that  wound  up  and  down 
by  the  side  of  the  lower  lakes. 

Mme.  Graslin  saw  Francis  a  long  way  off.  He  was  with  a 
woman  in  mourning,  who  had  thrown  her  arms  about  him. 
She  seemed  to  be  from  a  foreign  country,  judging  by  her  dress 
and  the  shape  of  her  hat.  Veronique  in  dismay  called  her 
son  to  her. 

"Who  is  that  woman  ?"  she  asked  of  the  other  children ; 
"and  why  did  Francis  go  away  from  you  ?" 

"The  lady  called  him  by  his  name,"  said  one  of  the  little 
girls.  Mme.  Sauviat  and  Gerard,  who  were  ahead  of  the 
others,  came  up  at  that  moment. 

"Who  is  that  woman,  dear?"  said  Mme.  Graslin,  turning 
to  Francis. 

"I  do  not  know,"  he  said,  "but  no  one  kisses  me  like  that 
except  you  and  grandmamma.  She  was  crying,"  he  added 
in  his  mother's  ear. 

"Shall  I  run  and  fetch  her  ?"  asked  Gerard. 

"No !"  said  Mme.  Graslin,  with  a  curtness  very  unusual 
with  her. 

With  kindly  tact,  which  Veronique  appreciated,  Gerard 
took  the  little  ones  with  him  and  went  back  to  meet  the  others ; 
so  that  Mme.  Sauviat,  Mme.  Graslin,  and  Francis  were  left 
together. 

"What  did  she  say  to  you  ?"  asked  Mme.  Sauviat,  address- 
ing her  grandson. 

"I  don't  know.     She  did  not  speak  French." 

"Did  you  not  understand  anything  she  said  ?"  asked  Vero- 
nique. 

"O'h  yes;  one  thing  she  said  over  and  over  again,  that  is 
how  I  can  remember  it — dear  brother!  she  said." 

Veronique  leant  on  her  mother's  arm  and  took  her  child's 
hand,  but  she  could  scarcely  walk,  and  her  strength  failed 
her, 


234  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

"What  is  it?  .  .  .  What  has  happened?"  .  .  . 
every  one  asked  of  Mme.  Sauviat. 

A  cry  broke  from  the  old  Auvergnate :  "Oh !  my  daughter 
is  in  danger !"  she  exclaimed,  in  her  guttural  accent  and  deep 
voice. 

Mme.  Graslin  had  to  be  carried  to  her  carriage.  She  or- 
dered Aline  to  keep  beside  Francis,  and  beckoned  to  Gerard. 

"You  have  been  in  Englan'd,  I  believe,"  she  said,  when  she 
had  recovered  herself;  "do  you  understand  English?  What 
do  these  words  mean — dear  brother?" 

"That  is  very  simple,"  said  Gerard,  and  he  explained. 

Veronique  exchanged  glances  with  Aline  and  Mme.  Sau- 
viat; the  two  women  shuddered,  but  controlled  their  feelings. 
Mme.  Graslin  sank  into  a  torpor  from  which  nothing  roused 
her;  she  did  not  heed  the  gleeful  voices  as  the  carriages 
started,  nor  the  splendor  of  the  sunset  light  on  the  meadows, 
the  even  pace  of  the  horses,  nor  the  laughter  of  the  friends 
who  followed  them  on  horseback  at  a  gallop.  Her  mother 
bade  the  man  drive  faster,  and  her  carriage  was  the  first  to 
reach  the  chateau.  When  the  rest  arrived  they  were  told 
that  Veronique  had  gone  to  her  room,  and  would  see  no  one. 

"I  am  afraid  that  Mme.  Graslin  must  have  received  a  fatal 
wound,"  Gerard  began,  speaking  to  his  friends. 

"Where?     .     .     .     How?"  asked  they. 

"In  the  heart,"  answered  Gerard. 

Two  days  later  Eoubaud  set  out  for  Paris.  He  had  seen 
that  Mme.  Graslin's  life  was  in  danger,  and  to  save  her  he 
had  gone  to  summon  the  first  doctor  in  Paris  to  give  his 
opinion  of  the  case.  But  Veronique  had  only  consented  to 
see  Eoubaud  to  put  an  end  to  the  importunities  of  Aline  and 
her  mother,  who  begged  her  to  be  more  careful  of  herself ;  she 
knew  that  she  was  dying.  She  declined  to  see  M.  Bonnet, 
saying  that  the  time  had  not  yet  come;  and  although  all  the 
friends  who  had  come  from  Limoges  for  her  birthday  festival 
were  anxious  to  stay  with  her,  she  entreated  them  to  pardon 
her  if  she  could  not  fulfil  the  duties  of  hospitality,  but  she 
needed  the  most  profound  solitude.  So,  after  Roubaud's 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  235 

sudden  departure,  the  guests  left  the  chateau  of  Montegnac 
and  went  back  to  Limoges,  not  so  much  in  disappointment  as 
in  despair,  for  all  who  had  come  with  Grossetete  adored  Vero- 
nique,  and  were  utterly  at  a  loss  as  to  the  cause  of  this  mys- 
terious disaster. 

One  evening,  two  days  after  Grossetete's  large  family  party 
had  left  the  chateau,  Aline  brought  a  visitor  to  Mme.  Gras- 
lin's  room.  It  was  Catherine  Farrabesche.  At  first  Cather- 
ine stood  glued  to  the  spot,  so  astonished  was  she  at  this 
sudden  change  in  her  mistress,  the  features  so  drawn. 

"Good  God !  madame,  what  harm  that  poor  girl  has  done ! 
If  only  we  could  have  known,  Farrabesche  and  I,  we  would 
never  have  taken  her  in.  She  has  just  heard  that  madame 
is  ill,  and  sent  me  to  tell  Mme.  Sauviat  that  she  should  like 
to  speak  to  her." 

"Here!"  cried  Veronique.  "Where  is  she  at  this  mo- 
ment ?" 

"My  husband  took  her  over  to  the  chalet." 

"Good,"  said  Mme.  Graslin;  "leave  us,  and  tell  Farra- 
besche to  go.  Tell  the  lady  to  wait,  and  my  mother  will  go 
to  see  her." 

At  nightfall  Veronique,  leaning  on  her  mother's  arm,  crept 
slowly  across  the  park  to  the  chalet.  The  moon  shone  with 
its  most  brilliant  glory,  the  night  air  was  soft ;  the  two  women, 
both  shaken  with  emotion  that  they  could  not  conceal,  received 
in  some  sort  the  encouragement  of  Nature.  From  moment 
to  moment  Mme.  Sauviat  stopped  and  made  her  daughter 
rest ;  for  Veronique's  sufferings  were  so  poignant  that  it  was 
nearly  midnight  before  they  reached  the  path  that  turned 
down  through  the  wood  to  the  meadows,  where  the  chalet  roof 
sparkled  like  silver.  The  moonlight  on  the  surface  of  the 
still  water  lent  it  a  pearly  hue.  The  faint  noises  of  the  night, 
which  travel  so  far  in  the  silence,  made  up  a  delicate  harmony 
of  sound. 

Veronique  sat  down  on  the  bench  outside  the  chalet  in  the 
midst  of  the  glorious  spectacle  beneath  the  starry  skies.  The 
murmur  of  two  voices  and  footfalls  on  the  sands  made  by  two 


236  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

persons  still  some  distance  away  was  borne  to  her  by  the  water, 
which  transmits  every  sound  in  the  stillness  as  faithfully  as 
it  reflects  everything  in  its  calm  surface.  There  was  an  ex- 
quisite quality  in  the  intonation  of  one  of  the  voices,  by  which 
Veronique  recognized  the  cure,  and  with  the  rustle  of  his  cas- 
sock was  blended  the  light  sound  of  a  silk  dress.  Evidently 
there  was  a  woman. 

"Let  us  go  in,"  she  said  to  her  mother.  Mme.  Sauviat  and 
Ve'ronique  sat  down  on  a  manger  in  the  low,  large  room 
built  for  a  cowshed. 

"I  am  not  blaming  you  at  all,  my  child,"  the  cure  was  say- 
ing ;  "but  you  may  be  the  cause  of  an  irreparable  misfortune, 
for  she  is  the  life  and  soul  of  this  countryside." 

"Oh,  monsieur!  I  will  go  to-night,"  the  stranger  woman's 
voice  answered;  "but — I  can  say  this  to  you — it  will  be  like 
death  to  me  to  leave  my  country  a  second  time.  If  I  had 
stayed  a  day  longer  in  that  horrible  New  York  or  in  the 
United  States,  where  there  is  neither  hope  nor  faith  nor  char- 
ity, I  should  have  died,  without  any  illness.  The  air  I  was 
breathing  hurt  my  chest,  the  food  did  me  no  good,  I  was  dying 
though  I  looked  full  of  life  and  health.  When  I  stepped  on 
board  the  suffering  ceased ;  I  felt  as  if  I  were  in  France.  Ah, 
monsieur !  I  have  seen  my  mother  and  my  brother's  wife  die 
of  grief.  And  then  my  grandfather  and  grandmother  Tas- 
cheron  died — died,  dear  M.  Bonnet,  in  spite  of  the  unheard-of 
prosperity  of  Tascheronville.  .  .  .  Yes.  Our  father  be- 
gan a  settlement,  a  village  in  Ohio,  and  now  the  village  is  al- 
most a  town.  One-third  of  the  land  thereabouts  belongs  to 
our  family,  for  God  has  watched  over  us  all  along,  and  the 
farms  have  done  well,  our  crops  are  magnificent,  and  we  are 
rich — so  rich  that  we  managed  to  build  a  Catholic  church. 
The  whole  town  is  Catholic;  we  will  not  allow  any  other  wor- 
ship, and  we  hope  to  convert  all  the  endless  sects  about  us  by 
our  example.  The  true  faith  is  in  a  minority  in  that  dreary 
mercenary  land  of  the  dojlar,  a  land  which  chills  one  to  the 
soul.  Still  I  would  go  back  to  die  there  sooner  than  do  the 
least  harm  here  or  give  the  slightest  pain  to  the  mother  of 


Tascheron's  sister  clasped  her  hands  at  the  sight  of  this  ghost 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  237 

our  dear  Francis.  Only  take  me  to  the  parsonage  house  to- 
night, dear  M.  Bonnet,  so  that  I  can  pray  awhile  on  his  grave ; 
it  was  just  that  that  drew  me  here,  for  as  I  came  nearer  and 
nearer  the  place  where  he  lies  I  felt  quite  a  different  being. 
No,  I  did  not  believe  I  should  feel  so  happy  here " 

"Very  well,"  said  the  cure;  "come,  let  us  go.  If  at  some 
future  day  you  can  come  back  without  evil  consequences,  I 
will  write  to  tell  you,  Denise;  but  perhaps  after  this  visit  to 
your  old  home  you  may  feel  able  to  live  yonder  without  suf- 
fering  " 

"Leave  this  country  now  when  it  is  so  beautiful  here! 
Just  see  what  Mme.  Graslin  has  made-  of  the  Gabou !"  she 
added,  pointing  to  the  moonlit  lake.  "And  then  all  this 
will  belong  to  our  dear  Francis " 

"You  shall  not  go,  Denise,"  said  Mme.  Graslin,  appear- 
ing in  the  stable  doorway. 

Jean-Frangois  Tascheron's  sister  clasped  her  hands  at  the 
sight  of  this  ghost  who  spoke  to  her;  for  Veronique's  white 
face  in  the  moonlight  looked  unsubstantial  as  a  shadow 
against  the  dark  background  of  the  open  stable  door.  Her 
eyes  glittered  like  two  stars. 

"No,  child,  you  shall  not  leave  the  country  you  have  trav- 
eled so  far  to  see,  and  you  shall  be  happy  here,  unless  God 
should  refuse  to  second  my  efforts;  for  God,  no  doubt,  has 
sent  you  here,  Denise." 

She  took  the  astonished  girl's  hand  in  hers,  and  went  with 
her  down  the  path  towards  the  opposite  shore  of  the  lake. 
Mme.  Sauviat  and  the  cure,  left  alone,  sat  down  on  the  bench. 

"Let  her  have  her  way,"  murmured  Mme.  Sauviat. 

A  few  minutes  later  Veronique  returned  alone ;  her  mother 
and  the  cure  brought  her  back  to  the  chateau.  Doubtless  she 
had  thought  of  some  plan  of  action  which  suited  the  mystery, 
for  nobody  saw  Denise,  no  one  knew  that  she  had  come  back. 

Mme.  Graslin  took  to  her  bed,  nor  did  she  leave  it.  Every 
day  she  grew  worse.  It  seemed  to  vex  her  that  she  could  not 
rise,  for  again  and  again  she  made  vain  efforts  to  get  up  and 
take  a  walk  in  the  park.  One  morning  in  early  June,  some 


238  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

days  after  that  night  at  the  chalet,  she  made  a  violent  effort 
and  rose  and  tried  to  dress  herself,  as  if  for  a  festival.  She 
begged  Gerard  to  lend  her  his  arm;  for  her  friends  came 
daily  for  news  of  her,  and  when  Aline  said  that  her  mistress 
meant  to  go  out  they  all  hurried  up  to  the  chateau.  Mme. 
Graslin  had  summoned  all  her  remaining  strength  to  spend  it 
on  this  last  walk.  She  gained  her  object  by  a  violent  spas- 
modic effort  of  the  will,  inevitably  followed  by  a  deadly  reac- 
tion. 

"Let  us  go  to  the  chalet — and  alone,"  she  said  to  Gerard. 
The  tones  of  her  voice  were  soft,  and  there  was  something  like 
coquetry  in  her  glance.  "This  is  my  last  escapade,  for  I 
dreamed  last  night  that  the  doctors  had  come." 

"Would  you  like  to  see  your  woods?"  asked  Gerard. 

"For  the  last  time.  But,"  she  added,  in  coaxing  tones,  "I 
have  some  strange  proposals  to  make  to  you." 

Gerard,  by  her  direction,  rowed  her  across  the  second  lake, 
when  she  had  reached  it  on  foot.  He  was  at  a  loss  to  under- 
stand such  a  journey,  but  she  indicated  the  summer-house  as 
their  destination,  and  he  plied  his  oars. 

There  was  a  long  pause.  Her  eyes  wandered  over  the 
hillsides,  the  water,  and  the  sky;  then  she  spoke: 

"My  friend,  it  is  a  strange  request  that  I  am  about  to  make 
to  you,  but  I  think  that  you  are  the  man  to  obey  me." 

"In  everything,"  he  said,  "sure  as  I  am  that  you  cannot 
will  anything  but  good." 

"I  want  you  to  marry,"  she  said ;  "you  will  fulfil  the  wishes 
of  a  dying  woman,  who  is  certain  that  she  is  securing  your 
happiness." 

"I  am  too  ugly!"  said  Gerard. 

"She  is  pretty,  she  is  young,  she  wants  to  live  in  Mon- 
tegnac ;  and  if  you  marry  her,  you  will  do  something  towards 
making  my  last  moments  easier.  We  need  not  discuss  her 
qualities.  I  tell  you  this,  that  she  is  a  woman  of  a  thousand ; 
and  as  for  her  charms,  youth,  and  beauty,  the  first  sight  will 
suffice;  we  shall  see  her  in  a  moment  in  the  summer-house. 
On  our  way  back  you  shall  give  me  your  answer,  a  'Yes'  or  a 
'No/  in  sober  earnest." 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  239 

Mme.  Graslin  smiled  as  she  saw  the  oars  move  more  swiftly 
after  this  confidence.  Denise,  who  was  living  out  of  sight  in 
the  island  sanctuary,  saw  Mme.  Graslin,  and  hurried  to  the 
door.  Veronique  and  Gerard  came  in.  In  spite  of  herself, 
the  poor  girl  flushed  as  she  met  the  eyes  that  Gerard  turned 
upon  her;  Denise's  beauty  was  an  agreeable  surprise  to  him. 

"La  Curieux  does  not  let  you  want  for  anything,  does  she  ?" 
asked  Veronique. 

"Look,  madame,"  said  Denise,  pointing  to  the  breakfast 
table. 

"This  is  M.  Gerard,  of  whom  I  have  spoken  to  you,"  Vero- 
nique went  on.  "He  will  be  my  son's  guardian,  and  when  I 
am  dead  you  will  all  live  together  at  the  chateau  until  Francis 
comes  of  age." 

"Oh,  madame !  don't  talk  like  that." 

"Just  look  at  me,  child !"  said  Veronique,  and  all  at  once 
she  saw  tears  in  the  girl's  eyes. — "She  comes  from  New 
York,"  she  added,  turning  to  Gerard. 

This  by  way  of  putting  both  on  a  footing  of  acquaintance. 
Gerard  asked  questions  of  Denise,  and  Mme.  Graslin  left 
them  to  chat,  going  to  look  out  over  the  view  of  the  last  lake 
on  the  Gabou.  At  six  o'clock  Gerard  and  Veronique  rowed 
back  to  the  chalet. 

"Well  ?"  queried  she,  looking  at  her  friend. 

"You  have  my  word." 

"You  may  be  without  prejudices,"  Veronique  began,  "but 
you  ought  to  know  how  it  was  that  she  was  obliged  to  leave 
the  country,  poor  child,  brought  back  by  a  homesick  long- 
ing." 

"A  slip." 

"Oh  no,"  said  Veronique,  "or  should  I  introduce  her  tc 
you?  She  is  the  sister  of  a  working-man  who  died  on  the 
scaffold  .  .  ." 

"Oh!  Tascheron,  who  murdered  old  Pingret " 

"Yes.  She  is  the  murderer's  sister,"  said  Mme.  Graslin, 
with  inexpressible  irony  in  her  voice;  "you  can  take  back 
your  word." 


240  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

She  went  no  further.  Gerard  was  compelled  to  carry  her 
to  the  bench  at  the  chalet,  and  for  some  minutes  she  lay  there 
unconscious.  Gerard,  kneeling  beside  her,  said,  as  soon  as 
she  opened  her  eyes : 

"I  will  marry  Denise." 

Mme.  Graslin  made  him  rise,  she  took  his  head  in  her 
hands,  and  set  a  kiss  on  his  forehead.  Then,  seeing  that  he 
was  astonished  to  be  thus  thanked,  she  grasped  his  hand  and 
said: 

<fYou  will  soon  know  the  meaning  of  this  puzzle.  Let  us 
try  to  reach  the  terrace  again,  our  friends  are  there.  It  is 
very  late,  and  I  feel  very  weak,  and  yet,  I  should  like  to  bid 
farewell  from  afar  to  this  dear  plain  of  mine." 

The  weather  had  been  intolerably  hot  all  day;  and  though 
the  storms,  which  did  so  much  damage  that  year  in  different 
parts  of  Europe  and  in  France  itself,  respected  the  Limousin, 
there  had  been  thunder  along  the  Loire,  and  the  air  began  to 
grow  fresher.  The  sky  was  so  pure  that  the  least  details  on 
the  horizon  were  sharp  and  clear.  What  words  can  describe 
the  delicious  concert  of  sounds,  the  smothered  hum  of  the 
township,  now  alive  with  workers  returning  from  the  fields? 
It  would  need  the  combined  work  of  a  great  landscape  painter 
and  a  painter  of  figures  to  do  justice  to  such  a  picture.  Is 
there  not,  in  fact,  a  subtle  connection  between  the  lassitude  of 
Nature  and  the  laborer's  weariness,  an  affinity  of  mood  hardly 
to  be  rendered?  In  the  tepid  twilight  of  the  dog  days,  the 
rarefied  air  gives  its  full  significance  to  the  least  sound  made 
by  every  living  thing. 

The  women  sit  chatting  at  their  doors  with  a  bit  of  work 
even  then  in  their  hands,  as  they  wait  for  the  goodman  who, 
probably,  will  bring  the  children  home.  The  smoke  going  up 
from  the  roofs  is  the  sign  of  the  last  meal  of  the  day  and  the 
gayest  for  the  peasants ;  after  it  they  will  sleep.  The  stir  at 
that  hour  is  the  expression  of  happy  and  tranquil  thoughts 
in  those  who  have  finished  their  day's  work.  There  is  a  very 
distinct  difference  between  their  evening  and  morning 
of  song;  for  in  this  the  village  folk  are  like  the  birds, 


THE  COUNTRY  PAItSON  241 

the  last  twitterings  at  night  are  utterly  unlike  their  notes  at 
dawn.  All  Nature  joins  in  the  hymn  of  rest  at  the  end  of  the 
day,  as  in  the  hymn  of  gladness  at  sunrise ;  all  things  take  the 
softly  blended  hues  that  the  sunset  throws  across  the  fields, 
tingeing  the  dusty  roads  with  mellow  light.  If  any  should 
be  bold  enough  to  deny  the  influences  of  the  fairest  hour  of 
the  day,  the  very  flowers  would  convict  him  of  falsehood,  in- 
toxicating him  with  their  subtlest  scents,  mingled  with  the 
tenderest  sounds  of  insects, the  amorous  faint  twitter  of  birds. 

Thin  films  of  mist  hovered  above  the  "water-lanes"  that 
furrowed  the  plain  below  the  township.  The  poplars  and 
acacias  and  sumach  trees,  planted  in  equal  numbers  along  the 
roads,  had  grown  so  tall  already  that  they  shaded  it,  and  in 
the  wide  fields  on  either  side  the  large  and  celebrated  herds 
of  cattle  were  scattered  about  in  groups,  some  'still  browsing, 
others  chewing  the  cud.  Men,  women,  and  children  were 
busy  getting  in  the  last  of  the  hay,  the  most  picturesque  of  all 
field  work.  The  evening  air,  less  languid  since  the  sudden 
breath  of  coolness  after  the  storms,  bore  the  wholesome  scents 
of  mown  grass  and  swaths  of  hay.  The  least  details  in  the 
beautiful  landscape  stood  out  perfectly  sharp  and  clear. 

There  was  some  fear  for  the  weather.  The  ricks  were  be- 
ing finished  in  all  haste ;  men  hurried  about  them  with  loaded 
forks,  raked  the  heaps  together,  and  loaded  the  carts.  Out 
in  the  distance  the  scythes  were  still  busy,  the  women  were 
turning  the  long  swaths  that  looked  like  hatched  lines  across 
the  fields  into  dotted  rows  of  haycocks. 

Sounds  of  laughter  came  up  from  the  hayfields,  the  work- 
ers frolicked  over  their  work,  the  children  shouted  as  they 
buried  each  other  in  the  heaps.  Every  figure  was  distinct, 
the  women's  petticoats,  pink,  red,  or  blue,  their  kerchiefs, 
their  bare  arms  and  legs,  the  wide-brimmed  straw  hats  of 
field-workers,  the  men's  shirts,  the  white  trousers  that  nearly 
all  of  them  wore. 

The  last  rays  of  sunlight  fell  like  a  bright  dust  over  the 
long  lines  of  poplar  trees  by  the  channels  which  divided  up 
the  plain  into  fields  of  various  sizes,  and  lingered  caressingly 


242  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

over  the  groups  of  men,  women,  and  children,  horses  and 
carts  and  cattle.  The  shepherds  and  herdsmen  began  to 
gather  their  flocks  together  with  the  sound  of  their  horns. 
The  plain  seemed  so  silent  and  so  full  of  souiid,  a  strange  an- 
tithesis, but  only  strange  to  those  who  do  not  know  the 
splendors  of  the  fields.  Loads  of  green  fodder  came  into 
the  township  from  every  side.  There  was  something  inde- 
scribably somnolent  in  the  influence  of  the  scene,  and  Vero- 
nique,  between  the  cure  and  Gerard,  uttered  no  word. 

At  last  they  came  to  a  gap  made  by  a  rough  track  that  led 
from  the  houses  ranged  below  the  terrace  to  the  parsonage 
house  and  the  church;  and  looking  down  into  Montegnac, 
Gerard  and  M.  Bonnet  saw  the  upturned  faces  of  the  women, 
men,  and  children,  all  looking  at  them.  Doubtless  it  was 
Mme.  Graslin  more  particularly  whom  they  followed  with 
their  eyes.  And  what  affection  and  gratitude  there  was  in 
their  way  of  doing  this!  With  what  blessings  did  they  not 
greet  Veronique's  appearance !  With  what  devout  intent- 
ness  they  watched  the  three  benefactors  of  a  whole  country- 
side !  It  was  as  if  man  added  a  hymn  of  gratitude  to  all  the 
songs  of  evening.  While  Mme.  Graslin  walked  with  her  eyes 
set  on  the  magnificent  distant  expanse  of  green,  her  dearest 
creation,  the  mayor  and  the  cure  watched  the  groups  below. 
There  was  no  mistake  about  their  expression;  grief,  melan- 
choly, and  regret,  mingled  with  hope,  were  plainly  visible  in 
them  all.  There  was  not  a  soul  in  Montegnac  but  knew  how 
that  M.  Koubaud  had  gone  to  Paris  to  fetch  some  great  doc- 
tors, and  that  the  beneficent  lady  of  the  canton  was  nearing 
the  end  of  a  fatal  illness.  On  market  days  in  every  place  for 
thirty  miles  round,  the  peasants  asked  the  Montegnac  folk, 
"How  is  your  mistress  ?"  And  so,  the  great  thought  of  death 
hovered  over  this  countryside  amid  the  fair  picture  of  the 
hay  fields. 

Far  off  in  the  plain,  more  than  one  mower  sharpening  his 
scythe,  more  than  one  girl  leaning  on  her  rake,  or  farmer 
among  his  stacks  of  hay,  looked  up  and  paused  thoughtfully 
to  watch  Mme.  Graslin,  their  great  lady,  the  pride  of  the 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  243 

Correze.  They  tried  to  discover  some  hopeful  sign,  or 
watched  her  admiringly,  prompted  hy  a  feeling  which  put 
work  out  of  their  minds.  "She  is  out  of  doors,  so  she  must 
be  better !"  The  simple  phrase  was  on  all  lips. 

Mme.  Graslin's  mother  was  sitting  at  the  end  of  the  ter- 
race. Veronique  had  placed  a  cast-iron  garden-seat  in  the 
corner,  so  that  she  might  sit  there  and  look  down  into  the 
churchyard  through  the  balustrade.  Mme.  Sauviat  watched 
her  daughter  as  she  walked  along  the  terrace,  and  her  eyes 
filled  with  tears.  She  knew  something  of  the  preternatural 
effort  which  Veronique  was  making;  she  knew  that  even  at 
that  moment  her  daughter  was  suffering  fearful  pain,  and 
that  it  was  only  a  heroic  effort  of  will  that  enabled  her  to 
stand.  Tears,  almost  like  tears  of  blood,  found  their  way 
down  among  the  sunburned  wrinkles  of  a  face  like  parchment, 
that  seemed  as  if  it  could  not  alter  one  crease  for  any  emotion 
any  more.  Little  Graslin,  standing  between  M.  Euffin's 
knees,  cried  for  sympathy. 

"What  is  the  matter,  child?"  the  tutor  asked  sharply. 

"Grandmamma  is  crying " 

M.  Kuffin's  eyes  had  been  fixed  on  Mme.  Graslin,  who  was 
coming  towards  them ;  he  looked  at  Mme.  Sauviat ;  the  Eoman 
matron's  face,  stony  with  sorrow  and  wet  with  tears,  gave  him 
a  great  shock.  That  dumb  grief  had  invested  the  old  woman 
with  a  certain  grandeur  and  sacredness. 

"Madame,  why  did  you  let  her  go  out  ?"  asked  the  tutor. 

Veronique  was  coming  nearer.  She  walked  like  a  queen, 
with  admirable  grace  in  her  whole  bearing.  And  Mme.  Sau- 
viat knew  that  she  should  outlive  her  daughter,  and  in  the 
cry  of  despair  that  broke  from  her,  a  secret  escaped  that  re- 
vealed many  things  which  roused  curiosity. 

"To  think  of  it !  She  walks  and  wears  a  horrible  hair  shirt 
always  pricking  her  skin  !" 

The  young  man's  blood  ran  cold  at  her  words ;  he  could  not 
be  insensible  to  the  exquisite  grace  of  Veronique's  move- 
ments, and  shuddered  as  he  thought  of  the  cruel,  unrelenting 
mastery  that  the  soul  must  have  gained  over  the  body.  A 


244  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

Parisienne  famed  for  her  graceful  figure,  the  ease  of  her  car- 
riage and  bearing,  might  perhaps  have  feared  comparison 
with  Veronique  at  that  moment. 

"She  has  worn  it  for  thirteen  years,  ever  since  the  child 
was  weaned,"  the  old.  woman  said,  pointing  to  young  Graslin. 
"She  has  worked  miracles  here ;  and  if  they  but  knew  her  life, 
they  might  put  her  among  the  saints.  Nobody  has  seen  her 
eat  since  she  came  here,  do  you  know  why  ?  Aline  brings  her 
a  bit  of  dry  bread  three  times  a  day  on  a  great  platter  full  of 
ashes,  and  vegetables  cooked  in  water  without  any  salt,  on  a 
red  earthenware  dish  that  they  put  a  dog's  food  in !  Yes. 
That  is  the  way  she  lives  who  has  given  life  to  the  canton. — 
She  says  her  prayers  kneeling  on  the  hem  of  her  cilice.  She 
says  that  if  she  did  not  practise  these  austerities,  she  could 
not  wear  the  smiling  face  you  see. — I  am  telling  you  this" 
(and  the  old  woman's  voice  dropped  lower)  "for  you  to  tell  it 
to  the  doctor  that  M.  Roubaud  has  gone  to  fetch  from  Paris. 
If  he  will  prevent  my  daughter  from  continuing  these  pen- 
ances, they  might  save  her  yet  (who  knows  ?)  though  the  hand 
of  death  is  on  her  head.  Look !  Ah,  I  must  be  very  strong 
to  have  borne  all  these  things  for  fifteen  years." 

The  old  woman  took  her  grandson's  hand,  raised  it,  and 
passed  it  over  her  forehead  and  cheeks  as  if  some  restorative 
balm  communicated  itself  in  the  touch  of  the  little  hand; 
then  she  set  a  kiss  upon  it,  a  kiss  full  of  the  love  which  is  the 
secret  of  grandmothers  no  less  than  mothers.  By  this  time 
Veronique  was  only  a  few  paces  distant,  Clousier  was  with 
her,  and  the  cure  and  Gerard.  Her  face,  lit  up  by  the  setting 
Bun,  was  radiant  with  awful  beauty. 

One  thought,  steadfast  amid  many  inward  troubles,  seemed 
to  be  written  in  the  lines  that  furrowed  the  sallow  forehead 
in  long  folds  piled  one  above  the  other  like  clouds.  The  out- 
lines of  her  face,  now  completely  colorless,  entirely  white 
with  the  dead  olive-tinged  whiteness  of  plants  grown  without 
sunlight,  were  thin  but  not  withered,  and  showed  traces  of 
great  physical  suffering  produced  by  mental  anguish.  She 
had  quelled  the  body  through  the  soul,  and  the  soul  through 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  245 

the  body.  So  completely  worn  out  was  she,  that  she  resembled 
her  past  self  only  as  an  old  woman  resembles  her  portrait 
painted  in  girlhood.  The  glowing  expression  of  her  eyes 
spoke  of  the  absolute  domination  of  a  Christian  will  over  a 
body  reduced  to  the  subjection  required  by  religion,  for  in 
this  woman  the  flesh  was  at  the  mercy  of  the  spirit.  As  in 
profane  poetry  Achilles  dragged  the  dead  body  of  Hector, 
victoriously  she  dragged  it  over  the  stony  ways  of  life;  and 
thus  for  fifteen  years  she  had  compassed  the  heavenly  Jeru- 
salem which  she  hoped  to  enter,  not  as  a  thief,  but  amid 
triumphant  acclamations.  Never  was  anchorite  amid  the 
parched  and  arid  deserts  of  Africa  more  master  of  his  senses 
than  Veronique  in  her  splendid  chateau  in  a  rich  land  of  soft 
and  luxuriant  landscape,  nestling  under  the  mantle  of  the 
great  forest  where  science,  heir  to  Moses'  rod,  had  caused 
plenty  to  spring  forth  and  the  prosperity  and  the  welfare  of 
a  whole  countryside.  Veronique  was  looking  out  over  the  re- 
sults of  twelve  years  of  patience,  on  the  accomplishment  of 
a  task  on  which  a  man  of  ability  might  have  prided  himself; 
but  with  the  gentle  modesty  which  Pontorno's  brush  depicted 
in  the  expression  of  his  symbolical  Christian  Chastity — with 
her  arms  about  the  unicorn.  Her  two  companions  respected 
her  silent  mood  when  they  saw  that  she  was  gazing  over  the 
vast  plain,  once  sterile,  and  now  fertile;  the  devout  lady  of 
the  manor  went  with  folded  arms  and  eyes  fixed  on  the  point 
where  the  road  reached  the  horizon. 

Suddenly  she  stopped  when  but  two  paces  away  from  Mme. 
Sauviat,  who  watched  her  as  Christ's  mother  must  have  gazed 
at  her  Son  upon  the  Cross.  Veronique  raised  her  hand  and 
pointed  to  the  spot  where  the  road  turned  off  to  Montegnac. 

"Do  you  see  that  caleche  and  the  four  post-horses?"  she 
asked,  smiling.  "That  is  M.  Roubaud.  He  is  coming  back. 
We  shall  soon  know  now  how  many  hours  I  have  to  live." 

"Hours!"  echoed  Gerard. 

"Did  I  not  tell  you  that  this  was  my  last  walk  ?"  she  said. 
"Did  I  not  come  to  see  this  beautiful  view  in  all  its  glory  for 
the  last  time?" 


246  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

She  indicated  the  fair  meadow-land,  lit  up  by  the  last  rays 
of  the  sun,  and  the  township  below.  All  the  village  had  come 
out  and  stood  in  the  square  in  front  of  the  church. 

"Ah,"  she  went  on,  "let  me  think  that  there  is  God's  bene- 
diction in  the  strange  atmospheric  conditions  that  have 
favored  our  hay  harvest.  Storms  all  about  us,  rain  and  hail 
and  thunder  have  laid  waste  pitilessly  and  incessantly,  but 
not  here.  The  people  think  so ;  why  should  I  not  follow  their 
example  ?  I  need  so  much  to  find  some  good  augury  on  earth 
for  that  which  awaits  me  when  my  eyes  shall  be  closed !" 

Her  child  came  to  her,  took  his  mother's  hand,  and  laid  it 
on  his  hair.  The  great  eloquence  of  that  movement  touched 
Veronique;  with  preternatural  strength  she  caught  him  up, 
held  him  on  her  left  arm  a  moment  as  she  used  to  hold  him  as 
a  child  at  the  breast,  and  kissed  him.  "Do  you  see  this  land, 
my  boy?"  she  said.  "You  must  go  on  with  your  mother's 
work  when  you  are  a  man." 

Then  the  cure  spoke  sadly :  "There  are  a  very  few  strong 
and  privileged  natures  who  are  permitted  to  see  Death  face 
to  face,  to  fight  a  long  duel  with  him,  and  to  show  courage 
and  skill  that  strike  others  with  admiration ;  this  is  the  dread- 
ful spectacle  that  you  give  us,  madame ;  but,  perhaps,  you  are 
somewhat  wanting  in  pity  for  us.  Leave  us  at  least  the  hope 
that  you  are  mistaken,  that  God  will  permit  you  to  finish  all 
that  you  have  begun." 

"I  have  done  nothing  save  through  you,  my  friends,"  said 
she.  "It  was  in  my  power  to  be  useful  to  you;  it  is  so  no 
longer.  Everything  about  us  is  green;  there  is  no  desolate 
waste  here  now,  save  my  own  heart.  You  know  it,  dear  cur6, 
you  know  that  I  can  only  find  peace  and  pardon  there " 

She  held  out  her  hand  over  the  churchyard.  She  had  never 
said  so  much  since  the  day  when  she  first  came  to  Montegnac 
and  fainted  away  on  that  very  spot.  The  cure  gazed  at  his 
penitent ;  and,  accustomed  as  he  had  been  for  long  to  read  her 
thoughts,  he  knew  from  those  simple  words  that  he  had  won 
a  fresh  victory.  It  must  have  cost  Veronique  a  terrible  effort 
over  herself  to  break  a  twelve  years'  silence  with  such  preg- 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  247 

nant  words;  and  the  cure  clasped  his  hands  with  the  devout 
fervor  familiar  to  him,  and  looked  with  deep  religious  emotion 
on  the  family  group  about  him.  All  their  secrets  had  passed 
through  his  heart. 

Gerard  looked  bewildered;  the  words  "peace  and  pardon" 
seemed  to  sound  strangely  in  his  ears;  M.  Ruffin's  eyes  were 
fixed  in  a  sort  of  dull  amazement  on  Mme.  Graslin.  And 
meanwhile  the  caleche  sped  rapidly  along  the  road,  threading 
its  way  from  tree  to  tree. 

"There  are  five  of  them !"  said  the  cure,  who  could  see  and 
count  the  travelers. 

"Five!"  exclaimed  M.  Gerard.  "Will  five  of  them  know 
more  than  two  ?" 

"Ah!"  murmured  Mme.  Graslin,  who  leant  on  the  cure's 
arm,  "there  is  the  public  prosecutor.  What  does  he  come  to  do 
here?" 

"And  papa  Grossetete  too  !"  cried  Francis. 

"Madame,  take  courage,  be  worthy  of  yourself,"  said  the 
cure.  He  drew  Mme.  Graslin,  who  was  leaning  heavily  on 
him,  a  few  paces  aside. 

"What  does  he  want?"  she  said  for  all  answer,  and  she 
went  to  lean  against  the  balustrade. — "Mother!" 

Mme.  Sauviat  sprang  forward  with  an  activity  that  belied 
her  years. 

"I  shall  see  him  again     .     .     ."  said  Veronique. 

"If  he  is  coming  with  M.  Grossetete,"  said  the  cure,  "it 
can  only  be  with  good  intentions,  of  course." 

"Ah!  sir,  my  daughter  is  dying!"  cried  Mme.  Sauviat, 
seeing  the  change  that  passed  over  Mme.  Graslin's  face  at  the 
words.  "How  will  she  endure  such  cruel  agitations?  M. 
Grossetete  has  always  prevented  that  man  from  coming  to 
see  Veronique : 

Veronique's  face  flamed. 

"So  you  hate  him,  do  you  ?"  the  Abbe  Bonnet  asked,  turning 
to  his  penitent. 

"She  left  Limoges  lest  all  Limoges  should  know  her 
secrets,"  said  Mme.  Sauviat,  terrified  by  that  sudden  change 
wrought  in  Mme.  Graslin's  drawn  features. 


248  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

"Do  you  not  see  that  his  presence  will  poison  the  hours 
that  remain  to  me,  when  Heaven  alone  should  be  in  my 
thoughts?  He  is  nailing  me  down  to  earth!"  cried  Vero- 
nique. 

The  cure  took  Mme.  Graslin's  arm  once  more,  and  con- 
strained her  to  walk  a  few  paces;  when  they  were  alone,  he 
looked  full  at  her  with  one  of  those  angelic  looks  which  calm 
the  most  violent  tumult  in  the  soul. 

"If  it  is  thus,"  he  said,  "I,  as  your  confessor,  bid  you  to 
receive  him,  to  be  kind  and  gracious  to  him,  to  lay  aside  this 
garment  of  anger,  and  to  forgive  him  as  God  will  forgive  you. 
Can  there  be  a  taint  of  passion  in  the  soul  that  I  deemed 
purified?  Burn  this  last  grain  of  incense  on  the  altar  of 
penitence,  lest  all  shall  be  one  lie  in  you." 

"There  was  still  this  last  struggle  to  make,  and  it  is  made," 
she  said,  drying  her  eyes.  "The  evil  one  was  lurking  in  the 
last  recess  in  my  heart,  and  doubtless  it  was  God  who  put  into 
M.  de  Granville's  heart  the  thought  that  sends  him  here. 
How  many  times  will  He  smite  me  yet?"  she  cried. 

She  stopped  as  if  to  put  up  an  inward  prayer;  then  she 
turned  to  Mme.  Sauviat,  and  said  in  a  low  voice : 

"Mother  dear,  be  nice  and  kind  to  M.  le  Procureur 
general." 

In  spite  of  herself,  the  old  Auvergnate  shuddered  fever- 
ishly. 

"There  is  no  hope  left,"  she  said,  as  she  caught  at  the  cure's 
hand. 

As  she  spoke,  the  cracking  of  the  postilion's  whip  an- 
nounced that  the  caleche  was  climbing  the  avenue ;  the  great 
gateway  stood  open,  the  carriage  turned  the  courtyard,  and 
in  another  moment  the  travelers  came  out  upon  the  terrace. 
Beside  the  public  prosecutor  and  M.  Grossetete,  the  Arch- 
bishop had  come  (M.  Dutheil  was  in  Limoges  for  Gabriel  de 
Rastignac's  consecration  as  Bishop),  and  M.  Roubaud  came 
arm-in-arm  with  Horace  Bianchon,  one  of  the  greatest  doctors 
in  Paris. 

"You  are  welcome,"  said  Veronique,  addressing  her  guests, 


THfc  COUNTRY  PARSON  249 

"and  you"  (holding  out  a  hand  to  the  public  prosecutor 
and  grasping  his)  "especially  welcome." 

M.  Grossetete,  the  Archbishop,  and  Mme.  Sauviat  ex- 
changed glances  at  this;  so  great  was  their  astonishment, 
that  it  overcame  the  profound  discretion  of  old  age. 

"And  I  thank  him  who  brought  you  here,"  Veronique  went 
on,  as  she  looked  on  the  Comte  de  Granville's  face  for  the  first 
time  in  fifteen  years.  "I  have  borne  you  a  grudge  for  a  long 
time,  but  now  I  know  that  I  have  done  }rou  an  injustice ;  you 
shall  know  the  reason  of  all  this  if  you  will  stay  here  in  Mon- 
tegnac  for  two  days." — She  turned  to  Horace  Bianchon — 
"This  gentleman  will  confirm  my  apprehensions,  no  doubt." 
— Then  to  the  Archbishop — "It  is  God  surely  who  sends  you 
to  me,  my  lord,"  she  said  with  a  bow.  "For  our  old  friend- 
ship's sake  you  will  not  refuse  to  be  with  me  in  my  last  mo- 
ments. By  what  grace,  I  wonder,  have  I  all  those  who  have 
loved  and  sustained  me  all  my  life  about  me  now  ?" 

At  the  word  "loved"  she  turned  with  graceful,  deliberate 
intent  towards  M.  de  Granville;  the  kindness  in  her  manner 
brought  tears  into  his  eyes.  There  was  a  deep  silence.  The 
two  doctors  asked  themselves  what  witchcraft  it  was  that 
enabled  the  woman  before  them  to  stand  upright  while  endur- 
ing the  agony  which  she  must  suffer.  The  other  three  were 
so  shocked  at  the  change  that  illness  had  wrought  in  her  that 
they  could  only  communicate  their  thoughts  by  the  eyes. 

"Permit  me  to  go  with  these  gentlemen,"  she  said,  with 
her  unvarying  grace  of  manner;  "it  is  an  urgent  question." 
She  took  leave  of  her  guests,  and,  leaning  upon  the  two 
doctors,  went  towards  the  chateau  so  slowly  and  painfully  that 
it  was  evident  that  the  end  was  at  hand. 

The  Archbishop  looked  at  the  cure. 

"M.  Bonnet,"  he  said,  "you  have  worked  wonders !" 

"Not  I,  but  God,  my  lord,"  answered  the  other. 

"They  said  that  she  was  dying,"  exclaimed  M.  Grossetete; 
"why,  she  is  dead  !  There  is  nothing  left  but  a  spirit " 

"A  soul,"  said  M.  Gerard. 

"She  is  the  same  as  ever,"  cried  the  public  prosecutor. 


250  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

"She  is  a  Stoic  after  the  manner  of  the  old  Greek  Zeno,* 
said  the  tutor. 

Silently  they  went  along  the  terrace  and  looked  out  over  the 
landscape  that  glowed  a  most  glorious  red  color  in  the  light 
shed  abroad  by  the  fires  of  the  sunset. 

"It  is  thirteen  years  since  I  saw  this  before,"  said  the 
Archbishop,  indicating  the  fertile  fields,  the  valley,  and  the 
trill  above  Montegnac,  "so  for  me  this  miracle  is  as  extraor- 
dinary as  another  which  I  have  just  witnessed;  for  how  can 
you  let  Mme.  Graslin  stand  upright  ?  She  ought  to  be  lying 
in  bed— 

"So  she  was,"  said  Mme.  Sauviat.  "She  never  left  her  bed 
for  ten  days,  but  she  was  determined  to  get  up  to  see  this 
place  for  the  last  time." 

"I  understand,"  said  M.  de  Granville.  "She  wished  to  say 
farewell  to  all  that  she  had  called  into  being,  but  she  ran  the 
risk  of  dying  here  on  the  terrace." 

"M.  Eoubaud  said  that  she  was  not  to  be  thwarted,"  said 
Mme.  Sauviat. 

"What  a  marvelous  thing!"  exclaimed  the  Archbishop, 
whose  eyes  never  wearied  of  wandering  over  the  view.  "She 
has  made  the  waste  into  sown  fields.  But  we  know,  mon- 
sieur," he  added,  turning  to  Gerard,  "that  your  skill  and  your 
labors  have  been  a  great  factor  in  this." 

"We  have  only  been  her  laborers,"  the  mayor  said.  "Yes; 
we  are  only  the  hands,  she  was  the  head." 

Mme.  Sauviat  left  the  group,  and  went  to  hear  what  the 
opinion  of  the  doctor  from  Paris  was. 

"We  shall  stand  in  need  of  heroism  to  be  present  at  this 
deathbed,"  said  the  public  prosecutor,  addressing  the  Arch- 
bishop and  the  cure. 

"Yes/'  said  M.  Grossetete;  "but  for  such  a  friend,  great 
things  should  be  done." 

While  they  waited  and  came  and  went,  oppressed  by  heavy 
thoughts,  two  of  Mme.  Graslin's  tenants  came  up.  They  had 
come,  they  said,  on  behalf  of  a  whole  township  waiting  in 
painful  suspense  to  hear  the  verdict  of  the  doctor  from  Paris. 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  251 

"They  are  in  consultation,  we  know  nothing  as  yet,  my 
friends,"  said  the  Archbishop. 

M.  Boubaud  came  hurrying  towards  them,  and  at  the  sound 
of  his  quick  footsteps  the  others  hastened  to  meet  him. 

"Well?"  asked  the  mayor. 

"She  has  not  forty-eight  hours  to  live,"  answered  M.  Rou- 
baud.  "The  disease  has  developed  while  I  was  away.  M. 
Bianchon  cannot  understand  how  she  could  walk.  These 
seldom  seen  phenomena  are  always  the  result  of  great  exalta- 
tion of  mind. — And  so,  gentlemen,"  he  added,  speaking  to 
the  churchmen,  "she  has  passed  out  of  our  hands  and  into 
yours;  science  is  powerless;  my  illustrious  colleague  thinks 
that  there  is  scarcely  time  for  the  ceremonies  of  the  Church." 

"Let  us  put  up  the  prayers  appointed  for  times  of  great 
calamity,"  said  the  cure,  and  he  went  away  with  his  parish- 
ioners. "His  lordship  will  no  doubt  condescend  to  administer 
the  last  sacraments." 

The  Archbishop  bowed  his  head  in  reply;  he  could  not  say 
a  word,  his  eyes  were  full  of  tears.  The  group  sat  down  or 
leant  against  the  balustrade,  and  each  was  deep  in  his  own 
thoughts.  The  church  bells  pealed  mournfully,  the  sound 
of  many  footsteps  came  up  from  below,  the  whole  village  was 
flocking  to  the  service.  The  light  of  the  altar  candles  gleamed 
through  the  trees  in  M.  Bonnet's  garden,  and  then  began  the 
sounds  of  chanting.  A  faintly  flushed  twilight  overspread 
the  fields,  the  birds  had  ceased  to  sing,  and  the  only  sound  in 
the  plain  was  the  shrill,  melancholy,  long-drawn  note  of  the 
frogs. 

"Let  us  do  our  duty,"  said  the  Archbishop  at  last,  and  he 
went  slowly  towards  the  house,  like  a  man  who  carries  a 
burden  greater  than  he  can  bear. 

The  consultation  had  taken  place  in  the  great  drawing- 
room,  a  vast  apartment  which  communicated  with  a  state 
bedroom,  draped  with  crimson  damask.  Here  Graslin  had 
exhibited  to  the  full  the  self-made  man's  taste  for  display. 
Veronique  had  not  entered  the  room  half-a-dozen  times  in 
fourteen  years ;  the  great  suite  of  apartments  was  completely 


252  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

useless  to  her;  she  had  never  received  visitors  in  them, 
but  the  effort  she  had  made  to  discharge  her  last  obligations 
and  to  quell  her  revolted  physical  nature  had  left  her  power- 
less to  reach  her  own  rooms. 

The  great  doctor  had  taken  his  patient's  hand  and  felt  her 
pulse,  then  he  looked  significantly  at  M.  Eoubaud,  and  the 
two  men  carried  her  into  the  adjoining  room  and  laid  her 
on  the  bed,  Aline  hastily  flinging  open  the  doors  for  them. 
There  were,  of  course,  no  sheets  on  the  state  bed;  the  two 
doctors  laid  Mine.  Graslin  at  full  length  on  the  crimson  quilt, 
Roubaud  opened  the  windows,  flung  back  the  Venetian  shut- 
ters, and  summoned  help.  La  Sauviat  and  the  servants 
came  hurrying  to  the  room;  they  lighted  the  wax  candles 
(yellow  with  age)  in  the  sconces. 

Then  the  dying  woman  smiled.  "It  is  decreed  that  my 
death  shall  be  a  festival,  as  a  Christian's  death  should  be." 

During  the  consultation  she  spoke  again: 

"The  public  prosecutor  has  done  his  work;  I  was  going; 
he  has  dispatched  me  sooner " 

The  old  mother  laid  a  finger  on  her  lips  with  a  warning 
glance. 

"Mother,  I  will  speak  now,"  Veronique  said  in  answer. 
"Look !  the  finger  of  God  is  in  all  this ;  I  shall  die  very  soon 
in  this  room  hung  with  red  .  .  ." 

La  Sauviat  went  out  in  dismay  at  the  words. 

"Aline !"  she  cried,  "she  is  speaking  out ! " 

"Ah !  madame's  mind  is  wandering,"  said  the  faithful  wait- 
ing-woman, coming  in  with  the  sheets.  "Send  for  M.  le  Cure, 
madame." 

"You  must  undress  your  mistress,"  said  Bianchon,  as  soon 
as  Aline  entered  the  room. 

"It  will  be  very  difficult ;  madame  wears  a  hair  shirt  next 
her  skin." 

"What?"  the  great  doctor  cried,  "are  such  horrors  still 
practised  in  this  nineteenth  century?" 

"Mme.  Graslin  has  never  allowed  me  to  touch  the  stomach." 
said  M.  Roubaud.  "I  could  learn  nothing  of  her  complaint 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  253 

save  from  her  face  and  her  pulse,  and  from  what  I  could 
learn  from  her  mother  and  her  maid." 

Veronique  was  laid  on  a  sofa  while  they  made  the  great 
bed  ready  for  her  at  the  further  end  of  the  room.  The  doctors 
spoke  together  with  lowered  voices  as  La  Sauviat  and  Aline 
made  the  bed.  There  was  a  look  terrible  to  see  in  the  two 
women's  faces;  the  same  thought  was  wringing  both  their' 
hearts.  "We  are  making  her  bed  for  the  last  time — this  will 
be  her  bed  of  death." 

The  consultation  was  brief.  In  the  first  place,  Bianchon 
insisted  that  Aline  and  La  Sauviat  must  cut  the  patient  out 
of  the  cilice  and  put  her  in  a  night-dress.  The  two  doctors 
waited  in  the  great  drawing-room  while  this  was  done.  Aline 
came  out  with  the  terrible  instrument  of  penance  wrapped 
in  a  towel.  "Madame  is  just  one  wound,"  she  told  them. 

"Madame,  you  have  a  stronger  will  than  Napoleon  had," 
said  Bianchon,  when  the  two  doctors  had  come  in  again,  and 
Veronique  had  given  clear  answers  to  the  questions  put  to  her. 
"You  are  preserving  your  faculties  in  the  last  stage  of  a  dis- 
ease in  which  the  Emperor's  brilliant  intellect  sank.  From 
what  I  know  of  you,  I  feel  that  I  owe  it  to  you  to  tell  you 
the  truth." 

"I  implore  you,  with  clasped  hands,  to  tell  it  me,"  she  said ; 
"you  can  measure  the  strength  that  remains  to  me,  and  I 
have  need  of  all  the  life  that  is  in  me  for  a  few  hours  yet." 

"You  must  think  of  nothing  but  your  salvation,"  said 
Bianchon. 

"If  God  grants  that  body  and  mind  die  together,"  she  said, 
with  a  divinely  sweet  smile,  "believe  that  the  favor  is  vouch- 
safed for  the  glory  of  His  Church  on  earth.  My  mind  is 
still  needed  to  carry  out  a  thought  from  God,  while  Napoleon 
had  accomplished  his  destiny." 

The  two  doctors  looked  at  each  other  in  amazement;  the 
words  were  spoken  as  easily  as  if  Mme.  Graslin  had  been  in 
her  drawing-room. 

"Ah!  here  is  the  doctor  who  will  heal  me,"  she  added  as 
the  Archbishop  entered. 


254  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

She  summoned  all  her  strength  to  sit  upright  to  take  leave 
of  M.  Bianchon,  speaking  graciously,  and  asking  him  to 
accept  something  besides  money  for  the  good  news  which  he 
had  just  brought  her;  then  she  whispered  a  few  words  to  her 
mother,  who  went  out  with  the  doctor.  She  asked  the  Arch- 
bishop to  wait  until  the  cure  should  come,  and  seemed  to  wish 
"to  rest  for  a  little  while.  Aline  sat  by  her  mistress'  bedside. 

At  midnight  Mme.  Graslin  woke  and  asked  for  the  Arch- 
bishop and  the  cure.  Aline  told  her  that  they  were  in  the 
room  engaged  in  prayer  for  her.  With  a  sign  she  dismissed 
her  mother  and  the  maid,  and  beckoned  the  two  priests  to 
her  bed. 

"Nothing  of  what  I  shall  say  is  unknown  to  you,  my  lord, 
nor  to  you,  M.  le  Cure.  You,  my  Lord  Archbishop,  were  the 
first  to  look  into  my  conscience ;  at  a  glance  you  read  almost 
the  whole  past,  and  that  which  you  saw  was  enough  for  you. 
My  confessor,  an  angel  sent  by  Heaven  to  be  near  me, 
knows  something  more;  I  have  confessed  all  to  him,  as  in 
duty  bound.  And  now  I  wish  to  consult  you — whose  minds 
are  enlightened  by  the  spirit  of  the  Church;  I  want  to  ask 
you  how  such  a  woman  as  I  should  take  leave  of  this  life  as  a 
true  Christian.  You,  spirits  holy  and  austere,  do  you  think 
that  if  Heaven  vouchsafes  pardon  to  the  most  complete  and 
profound  repentance  ever  made  by  a  guilty  soul,  I  shall  have 
accomplished  my  whole  task  here  on  earth?" 

"Yes ;  yes,  my  daughter,"  said  the  Archbishop. 

"No,  my  father,  no !"  she  cried,  sitting  upright,  and  light- 
nings flashed  from  her  eyes.  "Yonder  lies  an  unhappy  man 
in  his  grave,  not  many  steps  away,  under  the  sole  weight  of  a 
hideous  crime;  here,  in  this  sumptuous  house,  there  is  a 
woman  crowned  with  the  aureole  of  good  deeds  and  a  virtuous 
life.  They  bless  the  woman ;  they  curse  him,  poor  boy.  On 
the  criminal  they  heap  execrations,  I  enjoy  the  good  opinion 
of  all;  yet  most  of  the  blame  of  his  crime  is  mine,  and  a 
great  part  of  the  good  for  which  they  praise  me  so  and  are 
grateful  to  me  is  his ;  cheat  that  I  am !  I  have  the  credit 
of  it,  and  he,  a  martyr  to  his  loyalty  to  me,  is  covered  with 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  255 

shame.  In  a  few  hours  I  shall  die,  and  a  whole  canton  will 
weep  for  me,  a  whole  department  will  praise  my  good  deeds, 
my  piety,  and  my  virtues;  and  he  died  reviled  and  scorned, 
a  whole  town  crowding  about  to  see  him  die,  for  hate  of  the 
murderer !  You,  my  judges,  are  indulgent  to  me,  but  I  hear  an 
imperious  voice  within  me  that  will  not  let  me  rest.  Ah !  God's 
hand,  more  heavy  than  yours,  has  been  laid  upon  me  day  by 
day,  as  if  to  warn  me  that  all  was  not  expiated  yet.  My  sin 
shall  be  redeemed  by  public  confession.  Oh!  he  was  happy, 
that  criminal  who  went  to  a  shameful  death  in  the  face  of 
earth  and  heaven !  But  as  for  me,  I  cheated  justice,  and  I 
am  still  a  cheat !  All  the  respect  shown  to  me  has  been  like 
mockery,  not  a  word  of  praise  but  has  scorched  my  heart  like 
fire.  And  now  the  public  prosecutor  has  come  here.  Do  you 
not  see  that  the  will  of  Heaven  is  in  accordance  with  this  voice 
that  cries  'Confess  ?' ': 

Both  priests,  the  prince  of  the  Church  and  the  simple  coun- 
try parson,  the  two  great  luminaries,  remained  silent,  and 
kept  their  eyes  fixed  on  the  ground.  So  deeply  moved  were 
the  judges  by  the  greatness  and  the  submission  of  the  sinner, 
that  they  could  not  pass  sentence.  After  a  pause  the  Arch- 
bishop raised  his  noble  face,  thin  and  worn  with  the  daily 
practice  of  austerity  in  a  devout  life. 

"My  child,"  he  said,  "you  are  going  beyond  the  command- 
ments of  the  Church.  It  is  the  glory  of  the  Church  that  she 
adapts  her  dogmas  to  the  conditions  of  life  in  every  age ;  for 
the  Church  is  destined  to  make  the  pilgrimage  of  the  cen- 
turies side  by  side  with  humanity.  According  to  the  decision 
of  the  Church,  private  confession  has  replaced  public  confes- 
sion. This  substitution  has  made  the  new  rule  of  life.  The 
sufferings  which  you  have  endured  suffice.  Depart  in  peace. 
God  has  heard  you  indeed." 

"But  is  not  this  wish  of  a  criminal  in  accordance  with  the 
rule  of  the  Early  Church,  which  filled  heaven  with  as  many 
saints  and  martyrs  and  confessors  as  there  are  stars  in 
heaven  ?"  Veronique  cried  earnestly.  "Who  was  it  that  wrote 
'Confess  your  faults  one  to  another?'  Was  it  not  one  of  our 


256  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

Saviour's  own  immediate  disciples?  Let  me  confess  my 
shame  publicly  upon  my  knees.  That  will  be  an  expiation 
of  the  wrong  that  I  have  done  to  the  world,  and  to  a  family 
exiled  and  almost  extinct  through  my  sin.  The  world  should 
know  that  my  good  deeds  are  not  an  offering  to  God;  that 
they  are  only  the  just  payment  of  a  debt.  .  .  .  Suppose 
that,  when  I  am  gone,  some  finger  should  raise  the  veil  of  lies 
that  covers  me  ?  .  .  .  Oh,  the  thought  of  it  brings  the  su- 
preme hour  nearer." 

"I  see  calculation  in  this,  my  child,"  the  Archbishop  said 
gravely.  "There  are  still  strong  passions  left  in  you ;  that 
which  I  deemed  extinguished  is " 

"My  lord,"  she  cried,  breaking  in  upon  the  speaker,  turning 
her  fixed  horror-stricken  eyes  on  him,  "I  swear  to  you  that  my 
heart  is  purified  so  far  as  it  may  be  in  a  guilty  and  repentant 
woman;  there  is  no  thought  left  in  me  now  but  the  thought 
of  God." 

"Let  us  leave  Heaven's  justice  to  take  its  course,  my  lord," 
the  cure  said,  in  a  softened  voice.  "I  have  opposed  this  idea 
for  four  years.  It  has  caused  the  only  differences  of  opinion 
which  have  arisen  between  my  penitent  and  me.  I  have  seen 
the  very  depths  of  this  soul ;  earth  has  no  hold  left  there.  When 
the  tears,  sighs,  and  contrition  of  fifteen  years  have  buried  a 
sin  in  which  two  beings  shared,  do  not  think  that  there  is  the 
least  luxurious  taint  in  the  long  and  dreadful  remorse.  For 
a  long  while  memory  has  ceased  to  mingle  its  flames  in  the 
most  ardent  repentance.  Yes,  many  tears  have  quenched 
so  great  a  fire.  I  will  answer,"  he  said,  stretching  his  hand 
out  above  Mme.  Graslin's  head  and  raising  his  tear-filled  eyes, 
"I  will  answer  for  the  purity  of  this  archangel's  soul.  I 
used  once  to  see  in  this  desire  a  thought  of  reparation  to  an 
absent  family;  it  seems  as  if  God  Himself  has  sent  one  mem- 
ber of  it  here,  through  one  of  those  accidents  in  which  His 
guidance  is  unmistakably  revealed." 

Veronique  took  the  cure's  trembling  hand,  and  kissed  it. 

"You  have  often  bcon  harsh  to  me,  dear  pastor,"  she  paid  ; 
"and  now,  in  this  moment,  I  discover  where  your  apostolic 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  257 

sweetness  lay  hidden. — You,"  she  said,  turning  to  the  Arch- 
bishop, "you,  the  supreme  head  of  this  corner  of  God's  earthly 
kingdom,  be  my  stay  in  this  time  of  humiliation.  I  shall 
prostrate  myself  as  the  lowest  of  women;  you  will  raise  me, 
a  forgiven  soul,  equal,  it  may  be,  with  those  who  have  never 
gone  astray." 

The  Archbishop  was  silent  for  a  while,  engaged,  no  doubt, 
in  weighing  the  considerations  visible  to  his  eagle's  glance. 

"My  lord,"  said  the  cure,  "deadly  blows  have  been  aimed  at 
religion.  Will  not  this  return  to  ancient  customs,  made 
necessary  by  the  greatness  both  of  the  sin  and  the  repentance, 
be  a  triumph  which  will  redound  to  us  ?" 

"They  will  say  that  we  are  fanatics !  that  we  have  insisted 
on  this  cruel  scene  !"  and  the  Archbishop  fell  once  more  to  his 
meditations. 

Just  at  that  moment  Horace  Bianchon  and  Roubaud  came 
in  without  knocking  at  the  door.  As  it  opened,  Veronique 
saw  her  mother,  her  son,  and  all  the  servants  kneeling  in 
prayer.  The  cures  of  the  two  neighboring  parishes  had  come 
to  assist  M.  Bonnet;  perhaps  also  to  pay  their  respects  to 
the  great  Archbishop,  in  whom  the  Church  of  France  saw  a 
cardinal-designate,  hoping  that  some  day  the  Sacred  College 
might  be  enlightened  by  the  advent  of  an  intellect  so  thor- 
oughly Gallican. 

Horace  Bianchon  was  about  to  start  for  Paris;  he  came 
to  bid  farewell  to  the  dying  lady,  and  to  thank  her  for  her 
munificence.  He  approached  the  bed  slowly,  guessing  from 
the  manner  of  the  two  priests  that  the  inward  wound  which 
had  caused  the  disease  of  the  body  was  now  under  considera- 
tion. He  took  Veronique's  hand,  laid  it  on  the  bed,  and  felt 
her  pulse.  The  deepest  silence,  the  silence  of  the  fields  in 
a  summer  night,  added  solemnity  to  the  scene.  Lights  shone 
from  the  great  drawing-room,  beyond  the  folding  doors,  and 
fell  upon  the  little  company  of  kneeling  figures,  the  cures 
only  were  seated,  reading  their  breviaries.  About  the  crimson 
bed  of  state  stood  the  Archbishop  in  his  violet  robes,  the  cur6, 
and  the  two  men  of  science. 


258  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

"She  is  troubled  even  in  death !"  said  Horace  Bianchon. 
Like  many  men  of  great  genius,  he  not  seldom  found  grand 
words  worthy  of  the  scenes  at  which  he  was  present. 

The  Archbishop  rose,  as  if  goaded  by  some  inward  impulse. 
He  called  M.  Bonnet,  and  went  towards  the  door.  They 
crossed  the  chamber  and  the  drawing-room,  and  went  out 
upon  the  terrace,  where  they  walked  up  and  down  for  a  few 
minutes.  As  they  came  in  after  a  consideration  of  this  point 
of  ecclesiastical  discipline,  Roubaud  went  to  meet  them. 

"M.  Bianchon  sent  me  to  tell  you  to  be  quick ;  Mme.  Graslin 
is  dying  in  strange  agitation,  which  is  not  caused  by  the 
severe  physical  pain  which  she  is  suffering." 

The  Archbishop  hurried  back,  and  in  reply  to  Mme.  Gras- 
lin's  anxious  eyes,  he  said,  "You  shall  be  satisfied." 

Bianchon  (still  with  his  fingers  on  the  dying  woman's 
wrist)  made  an  involuntary  start  of  surprise;  he  gave  Rou- 
baud a  quick  look,  and  then  glanced  at  the  priests. 

"My  lord,  this  body  is  no  longer  our  province,"  he  said; 
"your  words  brought  life  in  the  place  of  death.  You  make  a 
miracle  credible." 

"Madame  has  been  nothing  but  soul  this  long  time  past," 
said  Roubaud,  and  Veronique  thanked  him  by  a  glance. 

A  smile  crossed  her  face  as  she  lay  there,  and,  with  the 
smile  that  expressed  the  gladness  of  a  completed  expiation, 
the  innocent  look  of  the  girl  of  eighteen  returned  to  her. 
The  appalling  lines  traced  by  inward  tumult,  the  dark  color- 
ing, the  livid  patches,  all  the  details  that  but  lately  had  con- 
tributed a  certain  dreadful  beauty  to  her  face,  all  alterations 
of  all  kinds,  in  short,  had  vanished;  to  those  who  watched 
Veronique  it  seemed  as  if  she  had  been  wearing  a  mask  and 
had  suddenly  dropped  it.  The  wonderful  transfiguration  by 
which  the  inward  life  and  nature  of  this  woman  was  made 
visible  in  her  features  was  wrought  for  the  last  time.  Her 
whole  being  was  purified  and  illuminated,  her  face  might 
have  caught  a  gleam  from  the  flaming  swords  of  the  guardian 
angels  about  her.  She  looked  once  more  as  she  used  to  look- 
in  Limoges  when  they  called  her  "the  little  Virgin."  The 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  259 

love  of  God  manifestly  was  yet  stronger  in  her  than  the 
guilty  love  had  been;  the  earthly  love  had  brought  out  all 
the  forces  of  life  in  her ;  the  love  of  God  dispelled  every  trace 
of  the  inroads  of  death.  A  smothered  cry  was  heard.  La 
Sauviat  appeared ;  she  sprang  to  the  bed.  "So  I  see  my  child 
again  at  last !"  she  exclaimed. 

Something  in  the  old  woman's  accent  as  she  uttered  the 
two  words,  "my  child,"  conjured  up  such  visions  of  early 
childhood  and  its  innocence,  that  those  who  watched  by  this 
heroic  deathbed  turned  their  heads  away  to  hide  their  emotion. 
The  great  doctor  took  Mine.  Graslin's  hand,  kissed  it, 
and  then  went  his  way,  and  soon  the  sound  of  his  departing 
carriage  sent  echoes  over  the  countryside,  spreading  the 
tidings  that  he  had  no  hope  of  saving  the  life  of  her  who  was 
the  life  of  the  country.  The  Archbishop,  cure,  and  doctor, 
and  all  who  felt  tired,  went  to  take  a  little  rest.  Mme.  Graslin 
herself  slept  for  some  hours.  When  she  awoke  the  dawn  was 
breaking;  she  asked  them  to  open  the  windows,  she  would  see 
her  last  sunrise. 

At  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning  the  Archbishop,  in  pontifical 
vestments,  came  back  to  Mme.  Graslin's  room.  Both  he  and 
M.  Bonnet  reposed  such  confidence  in  her  that  they  made  no 
recommendations  as  to  the  limits  to  be  observed  in  her  confes- 
sion. Veronique  saw  other  faces  of  other  clergy,  for  some  of 
the  cures  from  neighboring  parishes  had  come.  The  splendid 
ornaments  which  Mme.  Graslin  had  presented  to  her  beloved 
parish  church  lent  splendor  to  the  ceremony.  Eight  children, 
choristers  in  their  red-and-white  surplices,  stood  in  a  double 
row  between  the  bed  and  the  door  of  the  great  drawing-room, 
each  of  them  holding  one  of  the  great  candlesticks  of  gilded 
bronze  which  Veronique  had  ordered  from  Paris.  A  white- 
haired  sacristan  on  either  side  of  the  dai's  held  the  banner 
of  the  Church  and  the  crucifix.  The  servants,  in  their  devo- 
tion, had  removed  the  wooden  altar  from  the  sacristy  and 
erected  it  near  the  drawing-room  door;  it  was  decked  and 
ready  for  the  Archbishop  to  say  mass.  Mme.  Graslin  was 
touched  by  an  attention  which  the  Church  pays  only  to 


260  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

crowned  heads.  The  great  folding  doors  that  gave  access  to 
the  dining-room  stood  wide  open,  so  that  she  could  see  the 
hall  of  the  chateau  filled  with  people;  nearly  all  the  village 
was  there. 

Her  friends  had  seen  to  everything,  none  but  the  people 
of  the  house  stood  in  the  drawing-room;  and  before  them, 
grouped  about  the  door  of  her  room,  she  saw  her  intimate 
friends  and  those  whose  discretion  might  be  trusted.  M. 
Grossetete,  M.  de  Granville,  Eoubaud,  Gerard,  Clousier,  and 
Euffin  stood  foremost  among  these.  All  of  them  meant  to 
stand  upright  when  the  time  came,  so  that  the  dying  woman's 
confession  should  not  travel  beyond  them.  Other  things 
favored  this  design,  for  the  sobs  of  those  about  her  drowned 
her  voice. 

Two  of  these  stood  out  dreadfully  conspicuous  among  the 
rest.  The  first  was  Denise  Tascheron.  In  her  foreign  dress, 
made  with  Quakerly  simplicity,  she  was  unrecognizable  to  any 
of  the  villagers  who  might  have  caught  a  glimpse  of  her.  Not 
so  for  the  public  prosecutor ;  she  was  a  figure  that  he  was  not 
likely  to  forget,  and  with  her  reappearance  a  dreadful  light 
began  to  dawn  on  him.  Now  he  had  a  glimpse  of  the  truth, 
a  suspicion  of  the  part  which  he  had  played  in  Mme.  Graslin's 
life,  and  then  the  whole  truth  flashed  upon  him.  Less  over- 
awed than  the  rest  by  the  religious  influence,  the  child  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  the  man  of  law  felt  a  cruel  sensation  of 
dismay;  the  whole  drama  of  Veronique's  inner  life  in  the 
Hotel  Graslin  during  Tascheron's  trial  opened  out  before  him. 
The  whole  of  that  tragic  epoch  reconstructed  itself  in  his 
memory,  lighted  up  by  La  Sauviat's  eyes,  which  gleamed  with 
hate  of  him  not  ten  paces  away ;  those  eyes  seemed  to  direct  a 
double  stream  of  molten  lead  upon  him.  The  old  woman 
had  forgiven  him  nothing.  The  impersonation  of  man's  jus- 
tice felt  shudders  run  through  his  frame.  He  stood  there 
heart-stricken  and  pallid,  not  daring  to  turn  his  eyes  to  the 
bed  where  the  woman  whom  he  had  loved  was  lying,  livid 
beneath  the  shadow  of  Death's  hand,  drawing  strength  from 
the  very  magnitude  of  her  offence  to  quell  her  agony.  Vertigo 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  261 

seized  on  him  as  he  saw  Veronique's  shrunken  profile,  a  white 
outline  in  sharp  relief  against  the  crimson  damask. 

The  mass  began  at  eleven  o'clock.  When  the  cure  of  Vizay 
had  read  the  epistle,  the  Archbishop  divested  himself  of  his 
dalmatic,  and  took  up  his  station  in  the  doorway. 

"Christians  here  assembled  to  witness  the  administration 
of  extreme  unction  to  the  mistress  of  this  house,  you  who  are 
uniting  your  prayers  to  those  of  the  Church  to  make  inter- 
cession with  God  for  the  salvation  of  her  soul,  learn  that  she 
thinks  herself  unworthy  to  receive  the  holy  viaticum  until 
she  has  made,  for  the  edification  of  others,  a  public  confession 
of  her  greatest  sin.  We  withstood  her  pious  desire,  although 
this  act  of  contrition  was  long  in  use  in  the  Church  in  the 
earliest  Christian  times;  but  as  the  afflicted  woman  tells  us 
that  the  confession  touches  on  the  rehabilitation  of  an  un- 
happy child  of  this  parish,  we  leave  her  free  to  follow  the 
inspirations  of  repentance." 

After  these  words,  spoken  with  the  benign  dignity  of  a 
shepherd  of  souls,  the  Archbishop  turned  and  gave  place  to 
Veronique.  The  dying  woman  was  seen,  supported  by  her 
mother  and  the  cure,  two  great  and  venerable  symbols:  did 
she  not  owe  her  double  existence  to  the  earthly  mother  who 
had  borne  her,  and  to  the  Church,  the  mother  of  her  soul? 
Kneeling  on  a  cushion,  she  clasped  her  hands  and  meditated 
for  a  moment  to  gather  up  and  concentrate  the  strength  to 
speak  from  some  source  derived  from  Heaven.  There  was 
something  unspeakably  awful  in  that  silent  pause.  No  one 
dared  to  look  at  his  neighbor.  All  eyes  were  fixed  on  the 
ground.  Yet  when  Veronique  looked  up,  she  met  the  public 
prosecutor's  glance,  and  the  expression  of  that  white  face  sent 
the  color  to  her  own. 

"I  should  not  have  died  in  peace,"  Veronique  began,  in 
a  voice  unlike  her  natural  tone,  "if  I  had  left  behind  the  false 
impression  which  each  one  of  you  who  hears  me  speak  has  pos- 
sibly formed  of  me.  In  me  you  see  a  great  sinner,  who  be- 
seeches your  prayers,  and  seeks  to  merit  pardon  by  the  public 

confession  of  her  sin.    So  deeply  has  she  sinned,  so  fatal  were 
VOL  10-18 


262  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

the  consequences  of  her  guilt,  that  it  may  be  that  no  repent- 
ance will  redeem  it.  And  yet  the  greater  my  humiliation  on 
earth,  the  less,  doubtless,  have  I  to  dread  from  God's  anger 
in  the  heavenly  kingdom  whither  I  fain  would  go. 

"It  is  nearly  twenty  years  since  my  father,  who  had  such 
great  belief  in  me,  recommended  a  son  of  this  parish  to  my 
care ;  he  had  seen  in  him  a  wish  to  live  rightly,  aptitude,  and 
an  excellent  disposition.  This  young  man  was  the  unhappy 
Jean-Frangois  Tascheron,  who  thenceforward  attached  him- 
self to  me  as  his  benefactress.  How  was  it  that  my  affection 
for  him  became  a  guilty  one  ?  That  explanation  need  not,  I 
think,  be  required  of  me.  Yet,  perhaps  it  might  be  thought 
that  the  purest  possible  motives  were  imperceptibly  trans- 
formed by  unheard-of  self-sacrifice,  by  human  frailty,  by  a 
host  of  causes  which  might  seem  to  be  extenuations  of  my 
guilt.  But  am  I  the  less  guilty  because  our  noblest  affections 
were  my  accomplices?  I  would  rather  admit,  in  spite  of  the 
barriers  raised  by  the  delicacy  natural  to  our  sex  between 
me  and  the  young  man  whom  my  father  intrusted  to  me,  that 
I,  who  by  my  education  and  social  position  might  regard 
myself  as  his  protege's  superior,  listened,  in  an  evil  hour,  to 
the  voice  of  the  Tempter.  I  soon  found  that  my  maternal 
position  brought  me  into  contact  with  him  so  close  that  I 
could  not  but  be  sensible  of  his  mute  and  delicate  admiration. 
He  was  the  first  and  only  creature  to  appreciate  me  at  my  just 
value.  Perhaps,  too,  I  myself  was  led  astray  by  unworthy 
considerations.  I  thought  that  I  could  trust  to  the  discretion 
of  a  young  man  who  owed  every  thing -to  me,  whom  chance 
had  placed  so  far  below  me,  albeit  by  birth  we  were  equals. 
In  fact,  I  found  a  cloak  to  screen  my  conduct  in  my  name 
for  charity  and  good  deeds.  Alas!  (and  this  is  one  of  my 
worst  sins)  I  hid  my  passion  in  the  shadow  of  the  altar.  I 
made  everything  conduce  to  the  miserable  triumph  of  a  mad 
passion,  the  most  irreproachable  actions,  my  love  for  my 
mother,  acts  of  a  devotion  that  was  very  real  and  sincere  and 
through  so  many  errors, — all  these  things  were  so  many  links 
in  a  chain  that  bound  me.  My  poor  mother,  whom  I  love 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  283 

so  much,  who  hears  me  even  now,  was  unwittingly  and  for 
a  long  while  my  accomplice.  When  her  eyes  were  opened,  I 
was  too  deeply  committed  to  my  dangerous  way,  and  she 
found  strength  to  keep  my  secret  in  the  depths  of  her  mother's 
heart.  Silence  in  her  has  thus  become  the  loftiest  of  virtues. 
Love  for  her  daughter  overcame  the  love  of  God.  Ah !  now 
I  solemnly  relieve  her  of  the  load  of  secrecy  which  she  has 
carried.  She  shall  end  her  days  with  no  lie  in  her  eyes  and 
brow.  May  her  motherhood  absolve  her,  may  her  noble  and 
sacred  old  age,  crowned  with  virtues,  shine  forth  in  all  its 
radiance,  now  that  the  link  which  bound  her  indirectly  to 
touch  such  infamy  is  severed — 

Here  Veronique's  sobs  interrupted  her  words;  Aline  made 
her  inhale  salts. 

"Only  one  other  has  hitherto  been  in  this  secret,  the  faith- 
ful servant  who  does  me  this  last  service;  she  has,  at  least, 
feigned  not  to  know  what  she  must  have  known,  but  she  has 
been  in  the  secret  of  the  austerities  by  which  I  have  broken 
this  weak  flesh.  So  I  ask  pardon  of  the  world  for  having 
lived  a  lie,  drawn  into  that  lie  by  the  remorseless  logic  of  the 
world. 

"Jean-Frangois  Tascheron  is  not  as  guilty  as  men  may 
have  thought  him.  Oh,  all  you  who  hear  me !  I  beg  of  you  to 
remember  how  young  he  was,  and  that  his  frenzy  was  caused 
at  least  as  much  by  the  remorse  which  seized  on  me,  as  by 
the  spell  of  an  involuntary  attraction.  And  more,  far  more, 
do  not  forget  that  it  was  a  sense  of  honor,  if  a  mistaken  sense 
of  honor,  which  caused  the  greatest  disaster  of  all.  Neither 
of  us  could  endure  that  life  of  continual  deceits.  He  turned 
from  them  to  my  own  greatness,  and,  unhappy  that  he  was, 
sought  to  make  our  fatal  love  as  little  of  a  humiliation  as 
might  be  to  me.  So  I  was  the  cause  of  his  crime.  Driven  by 
necessity,  the  unhappy  man,  hitherto  only  guilty  of  too  great 
a  love  for  his  idol,  chose  of  all  evil  actions  the  one  most 
irreparable.  I  knew  nothing  of  it  until  the  very  moment 
when  the  deed  was  done.  Even  as  it  was  being  carried  out, 
God  overturned  the  whole  fabric  of  crooked  designs.  I  heard 


264  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

cries  that  ring  even  yet  in  my  ears,  and  went  into  the  house 
again.  I  knew  that  it  was  a  struggle  for  life  and  death,  and 
that  I,  the  object  of  this  mad  endeavor,  was  powerless  to  in- 
terfere. For  Tascheron  was  mad ;  I  bear  witness  that  he  was 
mad!  .  .  ." 

Here  Veronique  looked  at  the  public  prosecutor,  and  a  deep 
audible  sigh  came  from  Denise. 

"He  lost  his  head  when  he  saw  his  happiness  (so  he  believed 
it  to  be)  destroyed  by  unforeseen  circumstances.  Love 
led  him  astray,  then  dragged  him  from  a  misdemeanor 
to  a  crime,  and  from  a  crime  to  a  double  murder. 
At  any  rate,  when  he  left  my  mother's  house  he  was  an 
innocent  man;  when  he  returned,  he  was  a  murderer. 
I,  and  I  only  in  the  world,  knew  that  the  crime  was  not  pre- 
meditated, nor  accompanied  by  the  aggravating  circumstances 
which  brought  the  sentence  of  death  on  him.  A  hundred 
times  I  determined  to  give  myself  up  to  save  him,  and  a 
hundred  times  a  terrible  but  necessary  heroism  outweighed 
all  other  considerations,  and  the  words  died  on  my  lips. 
Surely  my  presence  a  few  steps  away  must  have  contributed 
to  give  him  the  hateful,  base,  cowardly  courage  of  a  mur- 
derer. If  he  had  been  alone,  he  would  have  fled.  ...  It 
was  I  who  had  formed  his  nature,  who  had  given  him  loftier 
thoughts  and  a  greater  heart ;  I  knew  him ;  he  was  incapable 
of  anything  cowardly  or  base.  Do  justice  to  the  innocent 
hand,  do  justice  to  him !  God  in  His  mercy  lets  him  sleep 
in  the  grave  that  you,  guessing,  doubtless,  the  real  truth,  have 
watered  with  your  tears !  Punish  and  curse  the  guilty  thing 
here  before  you  !: — When  once  the  deed  was  done,  I  was  horror- 
struck  ;  I  did  all  that  I  could  to  hide  it.  My  father  had  left 
a  charge  to  me,  a  childless  woman ;  I  was  to  bring  one  child 
of  God's  family  to  God,  and  I  brought  him  to  the  scaf- 
fold. .  .  .  Oh,  heap  all  your  reproaches  upon  me  !  The 
hour  has  come !" 

Her  eyes  glittered  with  fierce  pride  as  she  spoke.  The 
Archbishop,  standing  bebind  her.  with  his  pastoral  cross  held 
out  above  her  head,  no  longer  maintained  his  impassive  atti- 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  265 

tude;  he  covered  his  eyes  with  his  right  hand.  A  smothered 
sound  like  a  dying  groan  broke  the  silence,  and  two  men — 
Gerard  and  Boubaud — caught  Denise  Tascheron  in  their 
arms.  She  had  swooned  away.  The  fire  died  down  in  Vero- 
nique's  eyes;  she  looked  troubled,  but  the  martyr's  serenity 
soon  returned  to  her  face. 

"I  deserve  no  praise,  no  blessings  for  my  conduct  here,  as 
you  know  now,"  she  said.  "In  the  sight  of  Heaven  I  have  led 
a  life  full  of  sharp  penance,  hidden  from  all  other  eyes,  and 
Heaven  will  value  it  at  its  just  worth.  My  outward  life  has 
been  a  vast  reparation  of  the  evil  that  I  have  wrought ;  I  have 
engraved  my  repentance  in  characters  ineffaceable  upon  this 
wide  land,  a  record  that  will  last  for  ever.  It  is  written  every- 
where in  the  fields  grown  green,  in  the  growing  township,  in 
the  mountain  streams  turned  from  their  courses  into  the 
plain,  once  wild  and  barren,  now  fertile  and  productive.  Not 
a  tree  shall  be  felled  here  for  a  century  but  the  peasants  will 
tell  the  tale  of  the  remorse  to  which  they  owe  its  shade.  In 
these  ways  the  repentant  spirit  which  should  have  inspired  a 
long  and  useful  life  will  still  make  its  influence  felt  among 
you  for  a  long  time  to  come.  All  that  you  should  have  owed 
to  his  talents  and  a  fortune  honorably  acquired  has  been  done 
for  you  by  the  executrix  of  his  repentance,  by  her  who  caused 
his  crime.  All  the  wrong  done  socially  has  been  repaired ; 
I  have  taken  upon  myself  the  work  of  a  life  cut  short  in  its 
flower,  the  life  intrusted  to  my  guidance,  the  life  for  which 
I  must  shortly  give  an  account — 

Here  once  more  the  burning  eyes  were  quenched  in  tears. 
She  paused. 

"There  is  one  among  those  present,"  she  continued,  "whom 
I  have  hated  with  a  hate  which  I  thought  must  be  eternal, 
simply  because  he  did  no  more  than  his  duty.  He  was  the 
first  instrument  of  my  punishment.  I  was  too  close  to  the 
deed,  my  feet  were  dipped  too  deep  in  blood,  I  was  bound  to 
hate  justice.  I  knew  that  there  was^  a  trace  of  evil  passion 
in  my  heart  so  long  as  that  spark  of  anger  should  trouble 
it;  I  have  had  nothing  to  forgive,  I  have  simply  purged  the 


266  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

corner  where  the  Evil  One  lurked.  Whatever  the  victory  cost, 
it  is  complete." 

The  public  prosecutor  turned  a  tear-stained  face  to  Vero- 
nique.  It  was  as  if  man's  justice  was  remorseful  in  him. 
Veronique,  turning  her  face  away  to  continue  her  story,  met 
the  eyes  of  an  old  friend;  Grossetete,  bathed  in  tears, 
stretched  out  his  hands  entreatingly  towards  her.  "It  is 
enough  I"  he  seemed  to  say.  The  heroic  woman  heard  such 
a  chorus  of  sobs  about  her,  received  so  much  sympathy,  that 
she  broke  down;  the  balm  of  the  general  forgiveness  was  too 
much,  weakness  overcame  her.  Seeing  that  the  sources  of  her 
daughter's  strength  were  exhausted,  the  old  mother  seemed 
to  find  in  herself  the  vigor  of  a  young  woman;  she  held  out 
her  arms  to  carry  Veronique. 

"Christians,"  said  the  Archbishop,  "you  have  heard  the 
penitent's  confession ;  it  confirms  the  decree  of  man's  justice ; 
it  may  lay  all  scruples  and  anxiety  on  that  score  to  rest.  In 
this  confession  you  should  find  new  reasons  for  uniting  your 
prayers  to  those  of  the  Church,  which  offers  to  God  the  holy 
sacrifice  of  the  mass  to  implore  His  mercy  for  the  sinner  after 
so  grand  a  repentance." 

The  office  was  finished.  Veronique  followed  all  that  was 
said  with  an  expression  of  such  inward  peace  that  she  no 
longer  seemed  to  be  the  same  woman.  Her  face  wore  a  look 
of  frank  innocence,  such  as  it  might  have  worn  in  the  days 
when,  a  pure  and  ingenuous  girl,  she  dwelt  under  her  father's 
roof.  Her  brows  grew  white  in  the  dawn  of  eternity,  her  face 
glowed  golden  in  the  light  of  Heaven.  Doubtless  she  caught 
something  of  its  mystic  harmonies;  and  in  her  longing  to  be 
made  one  with  God  on  earth  for  the  last  time,  she  exerted  all 
her  powers  of  vitality  to  live.  M.  Bonnet  came  to  the  bedside 
and  gave  her  absolution;  the  Archbishop  anointed  her  with 
the  holy  oil,  with  a  fatherly  tenderness  that  revealed  to  those 
who  stood  about  how  dear  he  held  this  sheep  that  had  been 
lost  and  was  found.  With  that  holy  anointing  the  eyes  that 
had  wrought  such  mischief  on  earth  were  closed  to  the  things 
of  earth,  the  seal  of  the  Church  was  set  on  those  too  eloquent 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  267 

lips,  and  the  ears  that  had  listened  to  the  inspirations  of  evil 
were  closed  for  ever.  All  the  senses,  mortified  by  penitence, 
were  thus  sanctified;  the  spirit  of  evil  could  have  no  power 
over  this  soul. 

Never  had  all  the  grandeur  and  deep  meaning  of  a  sacra- 
ment been  apprehended  more  thoroughly  than  by  those  who 
saw  the  Church's  care  thus  justified  by  the  dying  woman's 
confession.  After  that  preparation,  Veronique  received  the 
Body  of  Christ  with  a  look  of  hope  and  joy  that  melted  the 
icy  barrier  of  unbelief  at  which  the  cure  had  so  often  knocked 
in  vain.  Roubaud,  confounded,  became  a  Catholic  from  that 
moment. 

Awful  as  this  scene  was,  it  was  no  less  touching;  and  in 
its  solemnity,  as  of  the  culminating-point  of  a  drama,  it 
might  have  given  some  painter  the  subject  of  a  masterpiece. 
When  the  mournful  episode  was  over,  and  the  words  of  the 
Gospel  of  St.  John  fell  on  the  ears  of  the  dying  woman,  she 
beckoned  to  her  mother  to  bring  Francis  back  again.  (The 
tutor  had  taken  the  boy  out  of  the  room.)  When  Francis 
knelt  on  the  step  by  the  bedside,  the  mother  whose  sins  had 
been  forgiven  felt  free  to  lay  her  hands  in  blessing  on  his 
head,  and  so  she  drew  her  last  breath,  La  Sauviat  standing  at 
the  post  she  had  filled  for  twenty  years,  faithful  to  the  end. 
It  was  she,  a  heroine  after  her  manner,  who  closed  the  eyes 
of  the  daughter  who  had  suffered  so  much,  and  laid  a  kiss  on 
them. 

Then  all  the  priests  and  assistants  came  round  the  bed, 
and  intoned  the  dread  chant  De  profundis  by  the  light  of 
the  flaming  torches;  and  from  those  sounds  the  people  of  the 
whole  countryside  kneeling  without,  together  with  the  friends 
and  all  the  servants  praying  in  the  hall,  knew  that  the  mother 
of  the  canton  had  passed  away.  Groans  and  sobs  mingled 
with  the  chanting.  The  noble  woman's  confession  had  not 
passed  beyond  the  threshold  of  the  drawing-room;  it  had 
reached  none  but  friendly  ears.  When  the  peasants  came 
from  Montegnac,  and  all  the  district  round  about  came  in, 
each  with  a  green  spray,  to  bid  their  benefactress  a  supreme 


268  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON 

farewell  mingled  with  tears  and  prayers,  they  saw  a  repre- 
sentative of  man's  justice,  bowed  down  with  anguish,  holding 
the  cold  hand  of  the  woman  to  whom  all  unwittingly  he  had 
meted  out  such  a  cruel  but  just  punishment. 

Two  days  later,  and  the  public  prosecutor,  with  Grossetete, 
the  Archbishop,  and  the  mayor,  bore  the  pall  when  Mme. 
Graslin  was  carried  to  her  last  resting-place.  Amid  deep 
silence  they  laid  her  in  the  grave;  no  one  uttered  a  word, 
for  no  one  had  the  heart  to  speak,  and  all  eyes  were  full  of 
tears. 

"She  is  a  saint !"  Everywhere  the  words  were  repeated 
along  the  roads  which  she  had  made,  in  the  canton  which 
owed  its  prosperity  to  her.  It  was  as  if  the  words  were  sown 
abroad  across  her  fields  to  quicken  the  life  in  them.  It  struck 
nobody  as  a  strange  thing  that  Mme.  Graslin  should  be  buried 
beside  Jean-Frangois  Tascheron.  She  had  not  asked  this; 
but  a  trace  of  pitying  tenderness  in  the  old  mother  prompted 
her  to  bid  the  sacristan  put  those  together  whom  earth  had 
separated  by  a  violent  death,  whom  one  repentance  should 
unite  in  Purgatory. 

Mme.  Graslin's  will  fulfilled  all  expectations.  She  founded 
scholarships  in  the  school  at  Limoges,  and  beds  in  the  hos- 
pital, intended  for  the  working  classes  only.  A  considerable 
sum  (three  hundred  thousand  francs  in  a  period  of  six  years) 
was  left  to  purchase  that  part  of  the  village  called  "Tasche- 
ron's,"  and  for  building  an  almshouse  there.  It  was  to  serve 
as  an  asylum  for  the  sick  and  aged  poor  of  the  district,  a 
lying-in  hospital  for  destitute  women,  and  a  home  for  found- 
ling children,  and  was  to  be  known  by  the  name  of  Tasche- 
ron's  Almshouse.  Veronique  directed  that  it  was  to  be  placed 
in  the  charge  of  the  Franciscan  Sisters,  and  fixed  the  salary  of 
the  head  physician  and  house  surgeon  at  four  thousand  francs. 
Mme.  Graslin  begged  Roubaud  to  be  the  first  head  physician, 
and  to  superintend  the  execution  of  the  sanitary  arrange- 
ments and  plans  to  be  made  by  the  architect,  M.  Gerard.  She 
also  endowed  the  commune  of  Montegnac  with  sufficient  land 
to  pay  the  taxes.  A  certain  fund  was  put  in  the  hands  of  the 


THE  COUNTRY  PARSON  269 

Church  to  be  used  as  determined  in  some  exceptional  cases1, 
for  the  Church  was  to  be  the  guardian  of  the  young;  and  if 
any  of  the  children  in  Montegnac  should  show  a  special  apti- 
tude for  art  or  science  or  industrial  pursuits,  the  far-sighted 
benevolence  of  the  testatrix  provided  thus  for  their  encour- 
agement. 

The  tidings  of  her  death  were  received  as  the  news  of  a 
calamity  "to  the  whole  country,  and  no  word  that  reflected  on 
her  memory  went  with  it.  This  silence  was  the  homage  paid 
to  her  virtues  by  a  devoutly  Catholic  and  hardworking  popula- 
tion, which  is  about  to  repeat  the  miracles  of  the  Lettres 
edifiantes  in  this  corner  of  France. 

Gerard,  appointed  Francis  Graslin's  guardian,  was  required 
by  the  terms  of  the  will  to  live  at  the  chateau,  and  thither  he 
went ;  but  not  until  three  months  after  Veronique's  death  did 
he  marry  Denise  Tascheron,  in  whom  Francis  found,  as  it 
were,  a  second  mother. 


ALBERT  SAVARUS 

To  Madame  Emile  Girardin. 

ONE  of  the  few  drawing-rooms  where,  under  the  Restoration, 
the  Archbishop  of  Besangon  was  sometimes  to  be  seen,  was 
that  of  the  Baronne  de  Watteville,  to  whom  he  was  particu- 
larly attached  on  account  of  her  religious  sentiments. 

A  word  as  to  this  lady,  the  most  important  lady  of 
Besangon. 

Monsieur  de  Watteville,  a  descendant  of  the  famous  Watte- 
ville,  the  most  successful  and  illustrious  of  murderers  and 
renegades — his  extraordinary  adventures  are  too  much  a  part 
of  history  to  be  related  here — this  nineteenth  century  Mon- 
sieur de  Watteville  was  as  gentle  and  peaceable  as  his  ancestor 
of  the  Grand  Siecle  had  been  passionate  and  turbulent.  After 
living  in  the  Comte*  like  a  wood-louse  in  the  crack  of  a  wain- 
scot, he  had  married  the  heiress  of  the  celebrated  house  of 
Rupt,  Mademoiselle  de  Rupt  brought  twenty  thousand  francs 
a  year  in  the  funds  to  add  to  the  ten  thousand  francs  a  year  in 
real  estate  of  the  Baron  de  Watteville.  The  Swiss  gentleman's 
coat-of-arms  (the  Wattevilles  are  Swiss)  was  then  borne  as 
an  escutcheon  of  pretence  on  the  old  shield  of  the  Rupts.  The 
marriage,  arranged  in  1802,  was  solemnized  in  1815  after  the 
second  Restoration.  Within  three  years  of  the  birth  of  a 
daughter  all  Madame  de  Watteville's  grandparents  were  dead, 
and  their  estates  wound  up.  Monsieur  de  Watteville's  house 
was  then  sold,  and  they  settled  in  the  Rue  de  la  Prefecture  in 
the  fine  old  mansion  of  the  Rupts,  with  an  immense  garden 
stretching  to  the  Rue  du  Perron.  Madame  de  Watteville,  de- 
vout as  a  girl,  became  even  more  so  after  her  marriage.  She 

*  La  Franche  Comtfe. 
(271) 


272  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

is  one  of  the  queens  of  the  saintly  brotherhood  which  gives  the 
upper  circles  of  Besangon  a  solemn  air  and  prudish  manners 
in  harmony  with  the  character  of  the  town. 

Monsieur  le  Baron  de  Watteville,  a  dry,  lean  man  devoid  of 
intelligence,  looked  worn  out  without  any  one  knowing 
whereby,  for  he  enjoyed  the  profoundest  ignorance ;  but  as  his 
wife  was  a  red-haired  woman,  and  of  a  stern  nature  that  be- 
came proverbial  (we  still  say  "as  sharp  as  Madame  de  Watte- 
ville"), some  wits  of  the  legal  profession  declared  that  he  had 
been  worn  against  that  rock — Rupt  is  obviously  derived  from 
rupes.  Scientific  students  of  social  phenomena  will  not  fail 
to  have  observed  that  Rosalie  was  the  only  offspring  of  the 
union  between  the  Wattevilles  and  the  Rupts. 

Monsieur  de  Watteville  spent  his  existence  in  a  handsome 
workshop  with  a  lathe ;  he  was  a  turner !  As  subsidiary  to  this 
pursuit,  he  took  up  a  fancy  for  making  collections.  Philo- 
sophical doctors,  devoted  to  the  study  of  madness,  regard  this 
tendency  towards  collecting  as  a  first  degree  of  mental  aberra- 
tion when  it  is  set  on  small  things.  The  Baron  de  Watteville 
treasured  shells  and  geological  fragments  of  the  neighborhood 
of  Besangon.  Some  contradictory  folk,  especially  women, 
would  say  of  Monsieur  de  Watteville,  "He  has  a  noble  soul ! 
He  perceived  from  the  first  days  of  his  married  life  that  he 
would  never  be  his  wife's  master,  so  he  threw  himself  into  a 
mechanical  occupation  and  good  living." 

The  house  of  the  Rupts  was  not  devoid  of  a  certain  magnifi- 
cence worthy  of  Louis  XIV.,  and  bore  traces  of  the  nobility 
of  the  two  families  who  had  mingled  in  1815.  The  chande- 
liers of  glass  cut  in  the  shape  of  leaves,  the  brocades,  the 
damask,  the  carpets,  the  gilt  furniture,  were  all  in  harmony 
with  the  old  liveries  and  the  old  servants.  Though  served  in 
blackened  family  plate,  round  a  looking-glass  tray  furnished 
with  Dresden  china,  the  food  was  exquisite.  The  wines  se- 
lected by  Monsieur  de  Watteville,  who,  to  occupy  his  time  and 
vary  his  employments,  was  his  own  butler,  enjoyed  a  sort  of 
fame  throughout  the  department.  Madame  de  Watteville's 
fortune  was  a  fine  one;  while  her  husband's,  which  consisted 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  273 

only  of  the  estate  of  Rouxey,  worth  about  ten  thousand  francs 
a  year,  was  not  increased  by  inheritance.  It  is  needless  to  add 
that  in  consequence  of  Madame  de  Watteville's  close  intimacy 
with  the  Archbishop,  the  three  or  four  clever  or  remarkable 
Abbes  of  the  diocese  who  were  not  averse  to  good  feeding  were 
very  much  at  home  at  her  house. 

At  a  ceremonial  dinner  given  in  honor  of  I  know  not  whose 
wedding,  at  the  beginning  of  September  1834,  when  the 
women  were  standing  in  a  circle  round  the  drawing-room 
fire,  and  the  men  in  groups  by  the  windows,  every  one  ex- 
claimed with  pleasure  at  the  entrance  of  Monsieur  1'Abbe  de 
Grancey,  who  was  announced. 

"Well,  and  the  lawsuit  ?"  they  all  cried. 

"Won !"  replied  the  Vicar-General.  "The  verdict  of  the 
Court,  from  which  we  had  no  hope,  you  know  why " 

This  was  an  allusion  to  the  members  of  the  First  Court  of 
Appeal  of  1830;  the  Legitimists  had  almost  all  withdrawn. 

"The  verdict  is  in  our  favor  on  every  point,  and  reverses  the 
decision  of  the  Lower  Court." 

"Everybody  thought  you  were  done  for/' 

"And  we  should  have  been,  but  for  me.  I  told  our  advocate 
to  be  off  to  Paris,  and  at  the  crucial  moment  I  was  able  to 
secure  a  new  pleader,  to  whom  we  owe  our  victory,  a  wonder- 
ful man — 

"At  Besangon  ?"  said  Monsieur  de  Watteville,  guilelessly. 

"At  Besangon,"  replied  the  Abbe  de  Grancey. 

"Oh  yes,  Savaron,"  said  a  handsome  young  man  sitting  near 
the  Baroness,  and  named  de  Soulas. 

"He  spent  five  or  six  nights  over  it ;  he  devoured  documents 
and  briefs ;  he  had  seven  or  eight  interviews  of  several  hours 
with  me,"  continued  Monsieur  de  Grancey,  who  had  just  re- 
appeared at  the  Hotel  de  Rupt  for  the  first  time  in  three 
weeks.  "In  short,  Monsieur  Savaron  has  just  completely 
beaten  the  celebrated  lawyer  whom  our  adversaries  had  sent 
for  from  Paris.  This  young  man  is  wonderful,  the  bigwigs 
say.  Thus  the  chapter  is  twice  victorious;  it  has  triumphed 
in  law  and  also  in  politics,  since  it  has  vanquished  Liberalism 


274  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

in  the  person  of  the  Counsel  of  our  Municipality. — 'Our  ad- 
versaries/ so  our  advocate  said,  'must  not  expect  to  find  readi- 
ness on  all  sides  to  ruin  the  Archbishoprics.' — The  President 
was  obliged  to  enforce  silence.  All  the  townsfolk  of  Besangon 
applauded.  Thus  the  possession  of  the  buildings  of  the  old 
convent  remains  with  the  Chapter  of  the  Cathedral  of  Be- 
sangon. Monsieur  Savaron,  however,  invited  his  Parisian 
opponent  to  dine  with  him  as  they  came  out  of  court.  He  ac- 
cepted, saying,  'Honor  to  every  conqueror/  and  complimented 
him  on  his  success  without  bitterness." 

"And  where  did  you  unearth  this  lawyer?"  said  Madame 
de  Watteville.  "I  never  heard  his  name  before." 

"Why,  you  can  see  his  windows  from  hence,"  replied  the 
Vicar-General.  "Monsieur  Savaron  lives  in  the  Rue  du  Per- 
ron ;  the  garden  of  his  house  joins  on  to  yours." 

"But  he  is  not  a  native  of  the  Comte,"  said  Monsieur  de 
Watteville. 

"So  little  is  he  a  native  of  any  place,  that  no  one  knows 
where  he  comes  from,"  said  Madame  de  Chavoncourt. 

"But  who  is  he?"  asked  Madame  de  Watteville,  taking  the 
Abbe's  arm  to  go  into  the  dining-room.  "If  he  is  a  stranger, 
by  what  chance  has  he  settled,  at  Besangon?  It  is  ?  strange 
fancy  for  a  barrister." 

"Very  strange  !"  echoed  Amedee  de  Soulas,  whose  biography 
is  here  necessary  to  the  understanding  of  this  tale. 

In  all  ages  France  and  England  have  carried  on  an  ex- 
change of  trifles,  which  is  all  the  more  constant  because  it 
evades  the  tyrann}'  of  the  Custom-houpe.  The  fashion  that  is 
called  English  in  Paris  is  called  French  in  London,  and  this 
is  reciprocal.  The  hostility  of  the  two  nations  is  suspended 
on  two  points — the  uses  of  words  and  the  fashion  of  dress. 
God  save  the  King,  the  national  air  of  England,  is  a  tune 
written  by  Lulli  for  the  Chorus  of  Esther  or  of  Athalie. 
Hoops,  introduced  at  Paris  by  an  Englishwoman,  were  in- 
vented in  London,  it  is  known  why,  by  a  Frenchwoman,  the 
notorious  Duchess  of  Portsmouth.  They  were  at  first  so  jeered 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  275 

at  that  the  first  Englishwoman  who  appeared  in  them  at  the 
Tuileries  narrowly  escaped  being  crushed  by  the  crowd;  but 
they  were  adopted.  This  fashion  tyrannized  over  the  ladies 
of  Europe  for  half  a  century.  At  the  peace  of  1815,  for  a  year, 
the  long  waists  of  the  English  were  a  standing  jest ;  all  Paris 
went  to  see  Pothier  and  Brunet  in  Les  Anglaises  pour  rire; 
but  in  1816  and  1817  the  belt  of  the  Frenchwoman,  which  in 
1814  cut  her  across  the  bosom,  gradually  descended  till  it 
reached  the  hips. 

Within  ten  years  England  has  made  two  little  gifts  to  our 
language.  The  Incroyable,  the  Merveilleux,  the  Elegant,  the 
three  successes  of  the  petit-maitre  of  discreditable  etymology, 
have  made  way  for  the  "dandy"  and  the  "lion."  The  lion  is 
not  the  parent  of  the  lionne.  The  lionne  is  due  to  the  famous 
song  by  Alfred  de  Musset : 

Avez  vous  vu  dans  Barcelona 
G'est  ma  maitresse  et  ma  lionne. 

There  has  been  a  fusion — or,  if  you  prefer  it,  a  confusion — 
of  the  two  words  and  the  leading  ideas.  When  an  absurdity 
can  amuse  Paris,  which  devours  as  many  masterpieces  as  ab- 
surdities, the  provinces  can  hardly  be  deprived  of  them.  So,  as 
soon  as  the  lion  paraded  Paris  with  his  mane,  his  beard  and 
moustaches,  his  waistcoats  and  his  eyeglass,  maintained  in 
its  place,  without  the  help  of  his  hands,  by  the  contraction  of 
his  cheek  and  eye-socket,  the  chief  towns  of  some  departments 
had  their  sub-lions,  who  protested  by  the  smartness  of  their 
trouser-straps  against  the  untidiness  of  their  fellow-towns- 
men. 

Thus,  in  1834,  Besangon  could  boast  of  a  lion,  in  the  person 
of  Monsieur  Amedee-Sylvain  de  Soulas,  spelt  Souleyas  at  the 
time  of  the  Spanish  occupation.  Amedee  de  Soulas  is  perhaps 
the  only  man  in  Besangon  descended  from  a  Spanish  family. 
Spain  sent  men  to  manage  her  business  in  the  Cotnte,  but  very 
few  Spaniards  settled  there.  The  Soulas  remained  in  conse- 


276  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

quence  of  their  connection  with  Cardinal  Granvelle.  Young 
Monsieur  de  Soulas  was  always  talking  of  leaving  Besangon,  a 
dull  town,  church-going,  and  not  literary,  a  military  centre 
and  garrison  town,  of  which  the  manners  and  customs  and 
physiognomy  are  worth  describing.  This  opinion  allowed  of 
his  lodging,  like  a  man  uncertain  of  the  future,  in  three  very 
scantily  furnished  rooms  at  the  end  of  the  Rue  Neuve,  just 
where  it  opens  into  the  Rue  de  la  Prefecture. 

Young  Monsieur  de  Soulas  could  not  possibly  live  without 
a  tiger.  This  tiger  was  the  son  of  one  of  his  farmers,  a  small 
servant  aged  fourteen,  thick-set,  and  named  Babylas.  The 
lion  dressed  his  tiger  very  smartly — a  short  tunic-coat  of  iron- 
gray  cloth,  belted  with  patent  leather,  bright  blue  plush 
breeches,  a  red  waistcoat,  polished  leather  top-boots,  a  shiny 
hat  with  black  lacing,  and  brass  buttons  with  the  arms  of 
Soulas.  Amedee  gave  this  boy  white  cotton  gloves  and  his 
washing,  and  thirty-six  francs  a  month  to  keep  himself — a 
sum  that  seemed  enormous  to  the  grisettes  of  Besangon :  four 
hundred  and  twenty  francs  a  year  to  a  child  of  fifteen,  without 
counting  extras !  The  extras  consisted  in  the  price  for  which 
he  could  sell  his  turned  clothes,  a  present  when  Soulas  ex- 
changed one  of  his  horses,  and  the  perquisite  of  tHe  manure. 
The  two  horses,  treated  with  sordid  economy,  cost,  one  with 
another,  eight  hundred  francs  a  year.  His  bills  for  articles 
received  from  Paris,  such  as  perfumery,  cravats,  jewelry,  pat- 
ent blacking,  and  clothes,  ran  to  another  twelve  hundred 
francs.  Add  to  this  the  groom,  or  tiger,  the  horses,  a  very 
superior  style  of  dress,  and  six  hundred  francs  a  year  for  rent, 
and  you  will  see  a  grand  total  of  three  thousand  francs. 

Now,  Monsieur  de  Soulas'  father  had  left  him  only  four 
thousand  francs  a  year,  the  income  from  some  cottage  farms 
in  rather  bad  repair,  which  required  keeping  up,  a  charge 
which  lent  painful  uncertainty  to  the  rents.  The  lion  had 
hardly  three  francs  a  day  left  for  food,  amusements,  and  gam- 
bling. He  very  often  dined  out,  and  breakfasted  with  remark- 
able frugality.  When  he  was  positively  obliged  to  dine  at  his 
own  cost,  he  sent  his  tigor  to  fetch  a  couple  of  dishes  from  a 
cookshop,  never  spending  more  than  twenty-five  sous. 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  277 

Young  Monsieur  de  Soulas  was  supposed  to  be  a  spend- 
thrift, recklessly  extravagant,  whereas  the  poor  man  made 
the  two  ends  meet  in  the  year  with  a  keenness  and  skill  which 
would  have  done  honor  to  a  thrifty  housewife.  At  Besangon 
in  those  days  no  one  knew  how  great  a  tax  on  a  man's  capital 
were  six  francs  spent  in  polish  to  spread  on  his  boots  or  shoes, 
yellow  gloves  at  fifty  sous  a  pair,  cleaned  in  the  deepest  secrecy 
to  make  them  three  times  renewed,  cravats  costing  ten  francs, 
and  lasting  three  months,  four  waistcoats  at  twenty-five 
francs,  and  trousers  fitting  close  to  the  boots.  How  could  he 
do  otherwise,  since  we  see  women  in  Paris  bestowing  their 
special  attention  on  simpletons  who  visit  them,  and  cut  out 
the  most  remarkable  men  by  means  of  these  frivolous  advan- 
tages, which  a  man  can  buy  for  fifteen  louis,  and  get  his  hair 
curled  and  a  fine  linen  shirt  into  the  bargain  ? 

If  this  unhappy  youth  should  seem  to  you  to  have  become  a 
lion  on  very  cheap  terms,  you  must  know  that  Amedee  de 
Soulas  had  been  three  times  to  Switzerland,  by  coach  and  in 
short  stages,  twice  to  Paris,  and  once  from  Paris  to  England. 
He  passed  as  a  well-informed  traveler,  and  could  say,  "In  Eng- 
land, where  I  went.  .  ."  The  dowagers  of  the  town  would 
say  to  him,  "You,  who  have  been  in  England  .  .  ."  He 
had  been  as  far  as  Lombardy,  and  seen  the  shores  of.  the 
Italian  lakes.  He  read  new  books.  Finally,  when  he  was 
cleaning  his  gloves,  the  tiger  Babylas  replied  to  callers,  "Mon- 
sieur is  very  busy."  An  attempt  had  been  made  to  withdraw 
Monsieur  Amedee  de  Soulas  from  circulation  by  pronouncing 
him  "A  man  of  advanced  ideas."  Amedee  had  the  gift  of  ut- 
tering with  the  gravity  of  a  native  the  commonplaces  that 
were  in  fashion,  which  gave  him  the  credit  of  being  one  of  the 
most  enlightened  of  the  nobility.  His  person  was  garnished 
with  fashionable  trinkets,  and  his  head  furnished  with  ideas 
hall-marked  by  the  press. 

In  1834  Amedee  was  a  young  man  of  five-and-twenty,  of 
medium  height,  dark,  with  a  very  prominent  thorax,  well- 
made  shoulders,  rather  plump  legs,  feet  already  fat,  white 
dimpled  hands,  a  beard  under  his  chin,  moustaches  worthy  of 


278  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

the  garrison,  a  good-natured,  fat,  rubicund  face,  a  flat  nose, 
and  brown  expressionless  eyes;  nothing  Spanish  about  him. 
He  was  progressing  rapidly  in  the  direction  of  obesity,  which 
would  be  fatal  to  his  pretensions.  His  nails  were  well  kept, 
his  beard  trimmed,  the  smallest  details  of  his  dress  attended 
to  with  English  precision.  Hence  Amedee  de  Soulas  was 
looked  upon  as  the  finest  man  in  Besanc/m.  A  hairdresser  who 
waited  upon  him  at  a  fixed  hour — another  luxury,  costing 
sixty  francs  a  year — held  him  up  as  the  sovereign  authority  in 
matters  of  fashion  and  elegance. 

Amedee  slept  late,  dressed  and  went  out  towards  noon,  to 
go  to  one  of  his  farms  and  practise  pistol-shooting.  He  at- 
tached as  much  importance  to  this  exercise  as  Lord  Byron  did 
in  his  later  days.  Then,  at  three  o'clock  he  came  home,  ad- 
mired on  horseback  by  the  grisettes  and  the  ladies  who  hap- 
pened to  be  at  their  windows.  After  an  affectation  of  study  or 
business,  which  seemed  to  engage  him  till  four,  he  dressed 
to  dine  out,  spent  the  evening  in  the  drawing-rooms  of  the 
aristocracy  of  Besangon  playing  whist,  and  went  home  to  bed 
at  eleven.  No  life  could  be  more  above  board,  more  prudent, 
or  more  irreproachable,  for  he  punctually  attended  the  services 
at  church  on  Sundays  and  holy  days. 

To  enable  you  to  understand  how  exceptional  is  such  a  life, 
it  is  necessary  to  devote  a  few  words  to  an  account  of  Besangon. 
No  town  ever  offered  more  deaf  and  dumb  resistance  to  prog- 
ress. At  Besangon  the  officials,  the  employes,  the  military, 
in  short,  every  one  engaged  in  governing  it,  sent  thither  from 
Paris  to  fill  a  post  of  any  kind,  are  all  spoken  of  by  the  expres- 
sive general  name  of  the  Colony.  The  colony  is  neutral 
ground,  the  only  ground  where,  as  in  church,  the  upper  rank 
and  the  townsfolk  of  the  place  can  meet.  Here,  fired  by 
a  word,  a  look,  or  gesture,  are  started  those  feuds  between 
house  and  house,  between  a  woman  of  rank  and  a  citizen's 
wife,  which  endure  till  death,  and  widen  the  impassable  gulf 
which  parts  the  two  classes  of  society.  With  the  exception  of 
the  Clermont-Mont-Saint-Jean,  the  Boauffremont,  the  de 
Scey,  and  the  Gramont  families,  with  a  few  others  who  come 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  279 

only  to  stay  on  their  estates  in  the  Comte,  the  aristocracy  of 
Besangon  dates  no  further  back  than  a  couple  of  centuries, 
the  time  of  the  conquest  by  Louis  XIV.  This  little  world  is 
essentially  of  the  parlement,  and  arrogant,  stiff,  solemn,  un- 
compromising, haughty  beyond  all  comparison,  even  with  the 
Court  of  Vienna,  for  in  this  the  nobility  of  Besangon  would 
put  the  Viennese  drawing-rooms  to  shame.  As  to  Victor  Hugo, 
Nodier,  Fourier,  the  glories  of  the  town,  they  are  never  men- 
tioned, no  one  thinks  about  them.  The  marriages  in  these 
families  are  arranged  in  the  cradle,  so  rigidly  are  the  greatest 
things  settled  as  well  as  the  smallest.  No  stranger,  no  in- 
truder, ever  finds  his  way  into  one  of  these  houses,  and  to 
obtain  an  introduction  for  the  colonels  or  officers  of  title 
belonging  to  the  first  families  in  France  when  quartered 
there,  requires  efforts  of  diplomacy  which  Prince  Talleyrand 
would  gladly  have  mastered  to  use  at  a  congress. 

In  1834  Amedee  was  the  only  man  in  Besangon  who  wore 
trouser-straps ;  this  will  account  for  the  young  man's  being 
regarded  as  a  lion.  And  a  little  anecdote  will  enable  you  to 
understand  the  city  of  Besangon. 

Some  time  before  the  opening  of  this  story,  the  need  arose 
at  the  prefecture  for  bringing  an  editor  from  Paris  for  the 
official  newspaper,  to  enable  it  to  hold  its  own  against  the 
little  Gazette,  dropped  at  Besangon  by  the  great  Gazette,  and 
the  Patriot,  which  frisked  in  the  hands  of  the  Kepublicans. 
Paris  sent  them  a  young  man,  knowing  nothing  about  la 
Franche  Comte,  who  began  by  writing  them  a  leading  article 
of  the  school  of  the  Charivari.  The  chiet  of  the  moderate 
party,  a  member  of  the  municipal  council,  sent  for  the  journal- 
ist and  said  to  him,  "You  must  understand,  monsieur,  that  we 
are  serious,  more  than  serious — tiresome;  we  resent  being 
amused,  and  are  furious  at  having  been  made  to  laugh.  B< 
as  hard  of  digestion  as  the  toughest  disquisitions  in  the  Revue 
des  Deux  Mondes,  and  you  will  hardly  reach  the  level  of 
Besangon." 

The  editor  took  the  hint,  and  thenceforth  spoke  the  most 
incomprehensible  philosophical  lingo.  His  success  was  com- 
plete. 


280  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

If  young  Monsieur  de  Soulas  did  not  fall  in  the  esteem  of 
Besangon  society,  it  was  out  of  pure  vanity  on  its  part;  the 
aristocracy  were  happy  to  affect  a  modern  air,  and  to  be  able 
to  show  any  Parisians  of  rank  who  visited  the  Comte  a  young 
man  who  bore  some  likeness  to  them. 

All  this  hidden  labor,  all  this  dust  thrown  in  people's  eyes, 
this  display  of  folly  and  latent  prudence,  had  an  object,  or 
the  lion  of  Besangon  would  have  been  no  son  of  the  soil. 
Amedee  wanted  to  achieve  a  good  marriage  by  proving  some 
day  that  his  farms  were  not  mortgaged,  and  that  he  had  some 
savings.  He  wanted  to  be  the  talk  of  the  town,  to  be  the 
finest  and  best-dressed  man  there,  in  order  to  win  first  the 
attention,  and  then  the  hand,  of  Mademoiselle  Rosalie 
de  Watteville. 

In  1830,  at  the  time  when  young  Monsieur  de  Soulas  was 
setting  up  in  business  as  a  dandy,  Eosalie  was  but  fourteen. 
Hence,  in  1834,  Mademoiselle  de  Watteville  had  reached  the 
age  when  young  persons  are  easily  struck  by  the  peculiarities 
which  attracted  the  attention  of  the  town  to  Amedee.  There 
are  many  lions  who  become  lions  out  of  self-interest  and  spec- 
ulation. The  Wattevilles,  who  for  twelve  years  had  been 
drawing  an  income  of  fifty  thousand  francs,  did  not  spend 
more  than  four-and-twenty  thousand  francs  a  year,  while 
receiving  all  the  upper  circle  of  Besangon  every  Monday  and 
Friday.  On  Monday  they  gave  a  dinner,  on  Friday  an  even- 
ing party.  Thus,  in  twelve  years,  what  a  sum  must  have  ac- 
cumulated from  twenty-six  thousand  francs  a  year,  saved  and 
invested  with  the  judgment  that  distinguishes  those  old  fam- 
ilies !  It  was  very  generally  supposed  that  Madame  de 
Watteville,  thinking  she  had  land  enough,  had  placed  her 
savings  in  the  three  per  cents,  in  1830.  Rosalie's  dowry 
would  therefore,  as  the  best  informed  opined,  amount  to 
about  twenty  thousand  francs  a  year.  So  for  the  last  five 
years  Amedee  had  worked  like  a  mole  to  get  into  the  highest 
favor  of  the  severe  Baroness,  while  laying  himself  out  to 
flatter  Mademoiselle  de  Watteville's  conceit. 

Madame  de  Watteville  was  in  the  secret  of  the  devices  by 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  281 

which  Amedee  succeeded  in  keeping  up  his  rank  in  Besangon, 
and  esteemed  him  highly  for  it.  Soulas  had  placed  himself 
under  her  wing  when  she  was  thirty,  and  at  that  time  had 
dared  to  admire  her  and  make  her  his  idol ;  he  had  got  so  far 
as  to  be  allowed — he  alone  in  the  world — to  pour  out  to  her 
all  the  unseemly  gossip  which  almost  all  very  precise  women 
love  to  hear,  being  authorized  by  their  superior  virtue  to  look 
into  the  gulf  without  falling,  and  into  the  devil's  snares  with- 
out being  caught.  Do  you  understand  why  the  lion  did  not 
allow  himself  the  very  smallest  intrigue?  He  lived  a  public 
life,  in  the  street  so  to  speak,  on  purpose  to  play  the  part  of  a 
lover  sacrificed  to  duty  by  the  Baroness,  and  to  feast  her  mind 
with  the  sins  she  had  forbidden  to  her  senses.  A  man  who  is 
so  privileged  as  to  be  allowed  to  pour  light  stories  into  the  ear 
of  a  bigot  is  in  her  eyes  a  charming  man.  If  this  exemplary 
youth  had  better  known  the  human  heart,  he  might  without 
risk  have  allowed  himself  some  flirtations  among  the  grisettes 
of  Besangon  who  looked  up  to  him  as  a  king ;  his  affairs  might 
perhaps  have  been  all  the  more  hopeful  with  the  strict  and 
prudish  Baroness.  To  Eosalie  our  Cato  affected  prodigality ; 
he  professed  a  life  of  elegance,  showing  her  in  perspective 
the  splendid  part  played  by  a  woman  of  fashion  in  Paris, 
whither  he  meant  to  go  as  Depute. 

All  these  manoeuvres  were  crowned  with  complete  success. 
In  1834  the  mothers  of  the  forty  noble  families  composing  the 
high  society  of  Besangon  quoted  Monsieur  Amedee  de  Soulas 
as  the  most  charming  young  man  in  the  town ;  no  one  would 
have  dared  to  dispute  his  place  as  cock  of  the  walk  at  the 
Hotel  de  Eupt,  and  all  Besangon  regarded  him  as  Eosalie  de 
Watteville's  future  husband.  There  had  even  been  some  ex- 
change of  ideas  on  the  subject  between  the  Baroness  and 
Amedee,  to  which  the  Baron's  apparent  nonentity  gave  some 
certainty. 

Mademoiselle  de  Watteville,  to  whom  her  enormous  pros- 
pective fortune  at  that  time  lent  considerable  importance, 
had  been  brought  up  exclusively  within  the  precincts  of  the 
Hotel  de  Eupt — which  her  mother  rarely  quitted,  so  devoied 


282  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

was  she  to  her  dear  Archbishop — and  severely  repressed  by  an 
exclusively  religious  education,  and  by  her  mother's  despot- 
ism, which  held  her  rigidly  to  principles.  Eosalie  knew  abso- 
lutely nothing.  Is  it  knowledge  to  have  learned  geography 
from  Guthrie,  sacred  history,  ancient  history,  the  history  of 
France,  and  the  four  rules,  all  passed  through  the  sieve  of  an 
old  Jesuit?  Dancing  and  music  were  forbidden,  as  being 
more  likely  to  corrupt  life  than  to  grace  it.  The  Baroness 
taught  her  daughter  every  conceivable  stitch  in  tapestry  and 
women's  work — plain  sewing,  embroidery,  netting.  At  seven- 
teen Rosalie  had  never  read  anything  but  the  Lettres  edifiantes 
and  some  works  on  heraldry.  No  newspaper  had  ever  defiled 
her  sight.  She  attended  mass  at  the  Cathedral  every  morn- 
ing, taken  there  by  her  mother,  came  back  to  breakfast,  did 
needlework  after  a  little  walk  in  the  garden,  and  received 
visitors,  sitting  with  the  Baroness  until  dinner-time.  Then, 
after  dinner,  excepting  on  Mondays  and  Fridays,  she  accom- 
panied Madame  de  Watteville  to  other  houses  to  spend  the 
evening,  without  being  allowed  to  talk  more  than  the  maternal 
rule  permitted. 

At  eighteen  Mademoiselle  de  Watteville  was  a  slight,  thin 
girl  with  a  flat  figure,  fair,  colorless,  and  insignificant  to  the 
last  degree.  Her  eyes,  of  a  very  light  blue,  borrowed  beauty 
from  their  lashes,  which,  when  downcast,  threw  a  shadow  on 
her  cheeks.  A  few  freckles  marred  the  whiteness  of  her  fore- 
head, which  was  shapely  enough.  Her  face  was  exactly  like 
those  of  Albert  Diirer's  saints,  or  those  of  the  painters  before 
Perugino;  the  same  plump,  though  slender  modeling,  the  same 
delicacy  saddened  by  ecstasy,  the  same  severe  guilelessness. 
Everything  about  her,  even  to  her  attitude,  was  suggestive 
of  those  virgins,  whose  beauty  is  only  revealed  in  its  mystical 
radiance  to  the  eyes  of  the  studious  connoisseur.  She  had 
fine  hands  though  red,  and  a  pretty  foot,  the  foot  of  an  aristo- 
crat. 

She  habitually  wore  simple  checked  cotton  dresses ;  but  on 
Sundays  and  in  the  evening  her  mother  allowed  her  silk.  The 
cut  of  her  frocks,  made  at  Besangon,  almost  made  her  ugly, 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  283 

while  her  mother  tried  to  borrow  grace,  beauty,  and  elegance 
from  Paris  fashions ;  for  through  Monsieur  de  Soulas  she  pro- 
cured the  smallest  trifles  of  her  dress  from  thence.  Eosalie 
had  never  worn  a  pair  of  silk  stockings  or  thin  boots,  but 
always  cotton  stockings  and  leather  shoes.  On  high  days  she 
was  dressed  in  a  muslin  frock,  her  hair  plainly  dressed,  and 
had  bronze  kid  shoes. 

This  education,  and  her  own  modest  demeanor,  hid  in 
Eosalie  a  spirit  of  iron.  Physiologists  and  profound  ob- 
servers will  tell  you,  perhaps  to  your  great  astonishment,  that 
tempers,  characteristics,  wit,  or  genius  reappear  in  families 
at  long  intervals,  precisely  like  what  are  known  as  hereditary 
diseases.  Thus  talent,  like  the  gout,  sometimes  skips  over 
two  generations.  We  have  an  illustrious  example  of  this  phe- 
nomenon in  George  Sand,  in  whom  are  resuscitated  the  force, 
the  power,  and  the  imaginative  faculty  of  the  Marechal  de 
Saxe,  whose  natural  granddaughter  she  is. 

The  decisive  character  and  romantic  daring  of  the  famous 
Watteville  had  reappeared  in  the  soul  of  his  grand-niece,  re- 
inforced by  the  tenacity  and  pride  of  blood  of  the  Eupts.  But 
these  qualities — or  faults,  if  you  will  have  it  so — were  as 
deeply  buried  in  this  young  girlish  soul,  apparently  so  weak 
and  yielding,  as  the  seething  lavas  within  a  hill  before  it 
becomes  a  volcano.  Madame  de  Watteville  alone,  perhaps, 
suspected  this  inheritance  from  two  strains.  She  was  so 
severe  to  her  Eosalie,  that  she  replied  one  day  to  the  Arch- 
bishop, who  blamed  her  for  being  too  hard  on  the  child,  "Leave 
me  to  manage  her,  monseigneur.  I  know  her !  She  has  more 
than  one  Beelzebub  in  her  skin !" 

The  Baroness  kept  all  the  keener  watch  over  her  daughter, 
because  she  considered  her  honor  as  a  mother  to  be  at  stake. 
After  all,  she  had  nothing  else  to  do.  Clotilde  de  Eupt,  at 
this  time  five-and-thirty,  and  as  good  as  widowed,  with  a  hus- 
band who  turned  egg-cups  in  every  variety  of  wood,  who  set 
his  mind  on  making  wheels  with  six  spokes  out  of  iron-wood, 
and  manufactured  snuff-boxes  for  everyone  of  his  acquaint- 
ance, flirted  in  strict  propriety  with  Amedee  de  Soulas.  When 


284  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

this  young  man  was  in  the  house,  she  alternately  dismissed  and 
recalled  her  daughter,  and  tried  to  detect  symptoms  of  jeal- 
ousy in  that  youthful  soul,  so  as  to  have  occasion  to  repress 
them.  She  imitated  the  police  in  its  dealings  with  the  repub- 
licans ;  but  she  labored  in  vain.  Eosalie  showed  no  symptoms 
of  rebellion.  Then  the  arid  bigot  accused  her  daughter  of 
perfect  insensibility.  Rosalie  knew  her  mother  well  enough 
to  be  sure  that  if  she  had  thought  young  Monsieur  de  Soulas 
nice,  she  would  have  drawn  down  on  herself  a  smart  reproof. 
Thus,  to  all  her  mother's  incitement  she  replied  merely  by 
such  phrases  as  'are  wrongly  called  Jesuitical — wrongly,  be- 
cause the  Jesuits  were  strong,  and  such  reservations  are  the 
chevaux  de  frise  behind  which  weakness  takes  refuge.  Then 
the  mother  regarded  the  girl  as  a  dissembler.  If  by  mis- 
chance a  spark  of  the  true  nature  of  the  Wattevilles  and  the 
Eupts  blazed  out,  the  mother  armed  herself  with  the  respect 
due  from  children  to  their  parents  to  reduce  Rosalie  to 
passive  obedience. 

This  covert  battle  was  carried  on  in  the  most  secret  se- 
clusion of  domestic  life,  with  closed  doors.  The  Vicar- 
General,  the  dear  Abbe  Grancey,  the  friend  of  the  late  Arch- 
bishop, clever  as  he  was  in  his  capacity  of  the  chief  Father 
Confessor  of  the  diocese,  could  not  discover  whether  the 
struggle  had  stirred  up  some  hatred  between  the  mother  and 
daughter,  whether  the  mother  were  jealous  in  anticipation, 
or  whether  the  court  Amedee  was  paying  to  the  girl  through 
her  mother  had  not  overstepped  its  due  limits.  Being 
a  friend  of  the  family,  neither  mother  nor  daughter,  con- 
fessed to  him.  Rosalie,  a  little  too  much  harried,  morally, 
about  young  de  Soulas,  could  not  abide  him,  to  use  a  homely 
phrase,  and  when  he  spoke  to  her,  trying  to  take  her  heart  by 
surprise,  she  received  him  but  coldly.  This  aversion,  dis- 
cerned only  by  her  mother's  eye,  was  a  constant  subject  of 
admonition. 

"Rosalie,  I  cannot  imagine  why  yon  affect  such  coldness 
towards  Amedee.  Is  it  because  he  is  a  friend  of  the  family, 
and  because  we  like  him — your  father  and  I  ?" 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  285 

"Well,  mamma/'  replied  the  poor  child  one  day,  "if  I 
made  him  welcome,  should  I  not  be  still  more  in  the  wrong?" 

"What  do  you  mean  by  that?"  cried  Madame  de  Watte- 
ville.  "What  is  the  meaning  of  such  words?  Your  mother 
is  unjust,  no  doubt,  and,  according  to  you,  would  be  so  in 
any  case !  Never  let  such  an  answer  pass  your  lips  again  to 
your  mother "  and  so  forth. 

This  quarrel  lasted  three  hours  and  three-quarters.  Eo- 
salie  noted  the  time.  Her  mother,  pale  with  fury,  sent  her  to 
her  room,  where  Eosalie  pondered  on  the  meaning  of  this  scene 
without  discovering  it,  so  guileless  was  she.  Thus  young 
Monsieur  de  Soulas,  who  was  supposed  by  every  one  to  be  very 
near  the  end  he  was  aiming  at,  all  neckcloths  set,  and  by  dint 
of  pots  of  patent  blacking — an  end  which  required  so  much 
waxing  of  his  moustaches,  so  many  smart  waistcoats,  wore  out 
so  many  horseshoes  and  stays — for  he  wore  a  leather  vest,  the 
stays  of  the  lion — Amedee,  I  say,  was  further  away  than  any 
chance  comer,  although  he  had  on  his  side  the  worthy  and 
noble  Abbe  de  Grancey. 

"Madame,"  said  Monsieur  de  Soulas,  addressing  the  Baron- 
ess, while  waiting  till  his  soup  was  cool  enough  to  swallow, 
and  affecting  to  give  a  romantic  turn  to  his  narrative,  "one 
fine  morning  the  mail-coach  dropped  at  the  Hotel  National  a 
gentleman  from  Paris,  who,  after  seeking  apartments,  made 
up  his  mind  in  favor  of  the  first  floor  in  Mademoiselle  Ga- 
lard's  house,  Eue  du  Perron.  Then  the  stranger  went  straight 
to  the  Mairie,  and  had  himself  registered  as  a  resident  with 
all  political  qualifications.  Finally,  he  had  his  name  entered 
on  the  list  of  barristers  to  the  Court,  showing  his  title  in  due 
form,  and  he  left  his  card  on  all  his  new  colleagues,  the  Min- 
isterial officials,  the  Councillors  of  the  Court,  and  the  mem- 
bers of  the  bench,  with  the  name,  'ALBERT  SAVARON.'  '; 

"The  name  of  Savaron  is  famous,"  said  Mademoiselle  de 
Watteville,  who  was  strong  in  heraldic  information.  "The 
Savarons  of  Savarus  are  one  of  the  oldest,  noblest,  and  richest 
families  in  Belgium." 


286  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

"He  is  a  Frenchman,  and  no  man's  son,"  replied  Amedee 
de  Soulas.  "If  he  wishes  to  bear  the  arms  of  the  Savarons 
of  Savarus,  he  must  add  a  bar-sinister.  There  is  no  one  left 
of  the  Brabant  family  but  a  Mademoiselle  de  Savarus,  a  rich 
heiress,  and  unmarried/' 

"The  bar-sinister  is,  of  course,  the  badge  of  a  bastard ;  but 
the  bastard  of  a  Comte  de  Savarus  is  noble,"  answered 
Eosalie. 

"Enough,  that  will  do,  mademoiselle!"  said  the  Baroness. 

"You  insisted  on  her  learning  heraldry,"  said  Monsieur  de 
Watteville,  "and  she  knows  it  very  well." 

"Go  on,  I  beg,  Monsieur  de  Soulas." 

"You  may  suppose  that  in  a  town  where  everything  is 
classified,  known,  pigeon-holed,  ticketed,  and  numbered,  as 
in  Besangon,  Albert  Savaron  was  received  without  hesitation 
by  the  lawyers  of  the  town.  They  were  satisfied  to  say,  'Here 
is  a  man  who  does  not  know  his  Besangon.  Who  the  devil 
can  have  sent  him  here  ?  What  can  he  hope  to  do  ?  Sending 
his  card  to  the  Judges  instead  of  calling  -in  person !  What  a 
blunder!'  And  so,  three  days  after,  Savaron  had  ceased  to 
exist.  He  took  as  his  servant  old  Monsieur  Galard's  man — 
Galard  being  dead — Jerome,  who  can  cook  a  little.  Albert 
Savaron  was  all  the  more  completely  forgotten,  because  no 
one  had  seen  him  or  met  him  anywhere." 

"Then,  does  he  not  go  to  mass?"  asked  Madame  de  Cha- 
voncourt. 

"He  goes  on  Sundays  to  Saint-Pierre,  but  to  the  early  ser- 
vice at  eight  in  the  morning.  He  rises  every  night  between 
one  and  two  in  the  morning,  works  till  eight,  has  his  breakfast, 
and  then  goes  on  working.  He  walks  in  his  garden,  going 
round  fift)r,  or  perhaps  sixty  times ;  then  he  goes  in,  dines,  and 
goes  to  bed  between  six  and  seven." 

"How  did  you  learn  all  that?"  Madame  de  Chavoncourt 
asked  Monsieur  de  Soulas. 

"In  the  first  place,  madame,  I  live  in  the  Rue  Neuve,  at  the 
corner  of  the  Eue  du  Perron ;  I  look  out  on  the  house  where 
this  mysterious  personage  lodges;  then,  of  course,  there  are 
communications  between  my  tiger  and  Jerome." 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  287 

"And  you  gossip  with  Babylas?" 

"What  would  you  have  me  do  out  riding  ?" 

"Well — and  how  was  it  that  you  engaged  a  stranger  for 
your  defence?"  asked  the  Baroness,  thus  placing  the  con- 
versation in  the  hands  of  the  Vicar-General. 

"The  President  of  the  Court  played  this  pleader  a  trick  by 
appointing  him  to  defend  at  the  Assizes  a  half-witted  peasant 
accused  of  forgery.  But  Monsieur  Savaron  procured  the  poor 
man's  acquittal  by  proving  his  innocence  and  showing  that  he 
had  been  a  tool  in  the  hands  of  the  real  culprits.  Not  only 
did  his  line  of  defence  succeed,  but  it  led  to  the  arrest  of  two 
of  the  witnesses,  who  were  proved  guilty  and  condemned.  His 
speech  struck  the  Court  and  the  jury.  One  of  these,  a  mer- 
chant, placed  a  difficult  case  next  day  in  the  hands  of  Mon- 
sieur Savaron,  and  he  won  it.  In  the  position  in  which  we 
found  ourselves,  Monsieur  Berryer  finding  it  impossible  to 
come  to  Besanc,on,  Monsieur  de  Garcenault  advised  him  to 
employ  this  Monsieur  Albert  Savaron,  foretelling  our  success. 
As  soon  as  I  saw  him  and  heard  him,  I  felt  faith  in  him,  and 
I  was  not  wrong." 

"Is  he  then  so  extraordinary  ?"  asked  Madame  de  Chavon- 
court. 

"Certainly,  madame,"  replied  the  Vicar-General. 

"Well,  tell  us  about  it,"  said  Madame  de  Watteville. 

"The  first  time  I  saw  him,"  said  the  Abbe  de  Grancey,  "he 
received  me  in  his  outer  room  next  the  ante-room — old  Ga- 
lard's  drawing-room — which  he  has  had  painted  like  old  oak, 
and  which  I  found  to  be  entirely  lined  with  law-books,  ar- 
ranged on  shelves  also  painted  as  old  oak.  The  painting  and 
the  books  are  the  sole  decoration  of  the  room,  for  the  furniture 
consists  of  an  old  writing-table  of  carved  wood,  six  old  arm- 
chairs covered  with  tapestry,  window  curtains  of  gray  stuff 
bordered  with  green,  and  a  green  carpet  over  the  floor.  The 
ante-room  stove  heats  this  library  as  well.  As  I  waited  there 
I  did  not  picture  my  advocate  as  a  young  man.  But  this 
singular  setting  is  in  perfect  harmony  with  his  person;  for 
Monsieur  Savaron  came  out  in  a  black  merino  dressing-gown 


288  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

tied  with  a  i\  d  cord,  red  slippers,  a  red  flannel  waistcoat,  and 
a  red  smoking  cap." 

"The  devil's  Colors !"  exclaimed  Madame  de  Watteville. 

"Yes,"  said  the  Abbe;  "but  a  magnificent  head.  Black 
hair  already  streaked  with  a  little  gray,  hair  like  that  of  Saint 
Peter  and  Saint  Paul  in  pictures,  with  thick  shining  curls, 
hair  as  stiff  as  horse-hair;  a  round  white  throat  like  a  wo- 
man's; a  splendid  forehead,  furrowed  by  the  strong  median 
line  which  great  schemes,  great  thoughts,  deep  meditations 
stamp  on  a  great  man's  brow;  an  olive  complexion  marbled 
with  red,  a  square  nose,  eyes  of  flame,  hollow  cheeks,  with  two 
long  lines  betraying  much  suffering,  a  mouth  with  a  sardonic 
smile,  and  a  small  chin,  narrow,  and  too  short ;  crow's  feet  on 
his  temples ;  deep-set  eyes,  moving  in  their  sockets  like  burning 
balls;  but,  in  spite  of  all  these  indications  of  a  violently 
passionate  nature,  his  manner  was  calm,  deeply  resigned,  and 
his  voice  of  penetrating  sweetness,  which  surprised  me  in 
Court  by  its  easy  flow;  a  true  orator's  voice,  now  clear  and 
appealing,  sometimes  insinuating,  but  a  voice  of  thunder 
when  needful,  and  lending  itself  to  sarcasm  to  become  in- 
cisive. 

"Monsieur  Albert  Savaron  is  of  middle  height,  neither  stout 
nor  thin.  And  his  hands  are  those  of  a  prelate. 

"The  second  time  I  called  on  him  he  received  me  in  his  bed- 
room, adjoining  the  library,  and  smiled  at  my  astonishment 
when  I  saw  there  a  wretched  chest  of  drawers,  a  shabby  carpet, 
a  camp-bed,  and  cotton  window-curtains.  He  came  out  of 
his  private  room,  to  which  no  one  is  admitted,  as  Jerome  in- 
formed me ;  the  man  did  not  go  in,  but  merely  knocked  at  the 
door. 

"The  third  time  he  was  breakfasting  in  his  library  on  the 
most  frugal  fare;  but  on  this  occasion,  as  he  had  spent  the 
night  studying  our  documents,  as  I  had  my  attorney  with  me, 
and  as  that  worthy  Monsieur  Girardet  is  long-winded,  I  had 
leisure  to  study  the  stranger.  He  certainly  is  no  ordinary 
man.  There  is  more  than  one  secret  behind  that  face,  at  once 
so  terrible  and  so  gentle,  patient  and  yet  impatient,  broad  and 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  289 

yet  hollow.  I  saw,  too,  that  he  stooped  a  little,  like  all  men 
who  have  some  heavy  burden  to  bear." 

"Why  did  so  eloquent  a  man  leave  Paris?  For  what  pur- 
pose did  he  come  to  Besangon?"  asked  pretty  Madame  de 
Chavoncourt.  "Could  no  one  tell  him  how  little  chance  a 
stranger  has  of  succeeding  here  ?  The  good  folks  of  Besangon 
will  make  use  of  him,  but  they  will  not  allow  him  to  make  use 
of  them.  Why,  having  come,  did  he  make  so  little  effort  that 
it  needed  a  freak  of  the  President's  to  bring  him  forward  ?" 

"After  •  carefully  studying  that  fine  head,"  said  the  Abbe, 
looking  keenly  at  the  lady  who  had  interrupted  him,  in  such 
a  way  as  to  suggest  that  there  was  something  he  would  not 
tell,  "and  especially  after  hearing  him  this  morning  reply  to 
one  of  the  bigwigs  of  the  Paris  Bar,  I  believe  that  this  man, 
who  may  be  five-and-thirty,  will  by  and  by  make  a  great  sensa- 
tion." 

"Why  should  we  discuss  him?  You  have  gained  your 
action,  and  paid  him,"  said  Madame  de  Watteville,  watching 
her  daughter,  who,  all  the  time  the  Vicar-General  had  been 
speaking,  seemed  to  hang  on  his  lips. 

The  conversation  changed,  and  no  more  was  heard  of  Albert 
Savaron. 

The  portrait  sketched  by  the  cleverest  of  the  Vicars-General 
of  the  diocese  had  all  the  greater  charm  for  Eosalie  because 
there  was  a  romance  behind  it.  For  the  first  time  in  her  life 
she  had  come  across  the  marvelous,  the  exceptional,  which 
smiles  on  every  youthful  imagination,  and  which  curiosity,  so 
eager  at  Rosalie's  age,  goes  forth  to  meet  half-way.  What  an 
ideal  being  was  this  Albert — gloomy,  unhappy,  eloquent,  labo- 
rious, as  compared  by  Mademoiselle  de  Watteville  to  that 
chubby  fat  Count,  bursting  with  health,  paying  compliments, 
and  talking  of  the  fashions  in  the  very  face  of  the  splendor  of 
the  old  counts  of  Rupt.  Amedee  had  cost  her  many  quarrels 
and  scoldings,  and,  indeed,  she  knew  him  only  too  well ;  while 
this  Albert  Savaron  offered  many  enigmas  to  be  solved. 

"Albert  Savaron  de  Savarus,"  she  repeated  to  herself. 


290  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

Now,  to  see  him,  to  catch  sight  of  him !  This  was  the  de- 
sire of  the  girl  to  whom  desire  was  hitherto  unknown.  She 
pondered  in  her  heart,  in  her  fancy,  in  her  brain,  the  least 
phrases  used  by  the  Abbe  de  Grancey,  for  all  his  words  had 
told. 

"A  fine  forehead !"  said  she  to  herself,  looking  at  the  head 
of  every  man  seated  at  the  table ;  "I  do  not  see  one  fine  one. — 
Monsieur  de  Soulas'  is  too  prominent ;  Monsieur  de  Grancey's 
is  fine,  but  he  is  seventy,  and  has  no  hair,  it  is  impossible  to 
see  where  his  forehead  ends." 

"What  is  the  matter,  Eosalie ;  you  are  eating  nothing  ?" 

"I  am  not  hungry,  mamma,"  said  she.  "A  prelate's  hands 
"  she  went  on  to  herself.  "I  cannot  remember  our  hand- 
some Archbishop's  hands,  though  he  confirmed  me." 

Finally,  in  the  midst  of  her  coming  and  going  in  the 
labyrinth  of  her  meditations,  she  remembered  a  lighted  win- 
dow she  had  seen  from  her  bed,  gleaming  through  the  trees 
of  the  two  adjoining  gardens,  when  she  had  happened  to  wake 
in  the  night.  .  .  .  "Then  that  was  his  light!"  thought 
she.  "I  might  see  him ! — I  will  see  him." 

"Monsieur  de  Grancey,  is  the  Chapter's  lawsuit  quite 
settled?"  said  Eosalie  point-blank  to  the  Vicar-General,  dur- 
ing a  moment  of  silence. 

Madame  de  Watteville  exchanged  rapid  glances  with  th 
Vicar-General. 

"What  can  that  matter  to  you,  my  dear  child  ?"  she  said  to 
Eosalie,  with  an  affected  sweetness  which  made  her  daughter 
cautious  for  the  rest  of  her  days. 

"It  might  be  carried  to  the  Court  of  Appeal,  but  our  adver- 
saries will  think  twice  about  that,"  replied  the  Abbe. 

"I  never  could  have  believed  that  Eosalie  would  think  about 
a  lawsuit  all  through  a  dinner,"  remarked  Madame  de  Watte- 
ville. 

"Nor  I  either,"  said  Eosalie,  in  a  dreamy  way  that  made 
every  one  laugh.  "But  Monsieur  de  Grancey  was  so  full  of  it, 
that  I  was  interested." 

The  company  rose  from  table  and  returned  to  the  drawing- 


ALBERT  SAVARTJS  291 

room.  All  through  the  evening  Rosalie  listened  in  case  Albert 
Savaron  should  be  mentioned  again;  but  beyond  the  congratu- 
lations offered  by  each  newcomer  to  the  Abbe  on  having 
gained  his  suit,  to  which  no  one  added  any  praise  of  the  advo- 
cate, no  more  was  said  about  it.  Mademoiselle  de  Watteville 
impatiently  looked  forward  to  bedtime.  She  had  promised 
herself  to  wake  at  between  two  and  three  in  the  morning,  and 
to  look  at  Albert's  dressing-room  windows.  When  the  hour 
came,  she  felt  almost  pleasure  in  gazing  at  the  glimmer  from 
the  lawyer's  candles  that  shone  through  the  trees,  now  almost 
bare  of  their  leaves.  By  the  help  of  the  strong  sight  of  a 
young  girl,  which  curiosity  seems  to  make  longer,  she  saw 
Albert  writing,  and  fancied  she  could  distinguish  the  color 
of  the  furniture,  which  she  thought  was  red.  From  the 
chimney  above  the  roof  rose  a  thick  column  of  smoke. 

"While  all  the  world  is  sleeping,  he  is  awake — like  God !" 
thought  she. 

The  education  of  girls  brings  with  it  such  serious  problems 
— for  the  future  of  a  nation  is  in  the  mother — that  the  Uni- 
versity of  France  long  since  set  itself  the  task  of  having  noth- 
ing to  do  with  it.  Here  is  one  of  these  problems :  Ought 
girls  to  be  informed  on  all  points?  Ought  their  minds  to  be 
under  restraint?  It  need  not  be  said  that  the  religious  sys- 
tem is  one  of  restraint.  If  you  enlighten  them,  you  make 
them  demons  before  their  time ;  if  you  keep  them  from  think- 
ing, you  end  in  the  sudden  explosion  so  well  shown  by  Moliere 
in  the  character  of  Agnes,  and  you  leave  this  suppressed  mind, 
so  fresh  and  clear-seeing,  as  swift  and  as  logical  as  that  of  a 
savage,  at  the  mercy  of  an  accident.  This  inevitable  crisis  was 
brought  on  in  Mademoiselle  de  Watteville  by  the  portrait 
which  one  of  the  most  prudent  Abbes  of  the  Chapter  of  Be- 
sanqon  imprudently  allowed  himself  to  sketch  at  a  dinner  party. 

Next  morning,  Mademoiselle  de  Watteville,  while  dressing, 
necessarily  looked  out  at  Albert  Savaron  walking  in  the  garden 
adjoining  that  of  the  Hotel  de  Rupt. 

"What  would  have  become  of  me,"  thought  she,  "if  he  had 
lived  anywhere  else  ?  Here  I  can,  at  any  rate,  see  him. — What 
i3  he  thinking  about?" 


292  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

Having  seen  this  extraordinary  man,  though  at  a  distance, 
the  only  man  whose  countenance  stood  forth  in  contrast  with 
crowds  of  Besangon  faces  she  had  hitherto  met  with,  Eosalie 
at  once  jumped  at  the  idea  of  getting  into  his  home,  of  ascer- 
taining the  reason  of  so  much  mystery,  of  hearing  that 
eloquent  voice,  of  winning  a  glance  from  those  fine  eyes.  All 
this  she  set  her  heart  on,  but  how  could  she  achieve  it  ? 

All  that  day  she  drew  her  needle  through  her  embroidery 
with  the  obtuse  concentration  of  a  girl  who,  like  Agnes,  seems 
to  be  thinking  of  nothing,  but  who  is  reflecting  on  things  in 
general  so  deeply,  that  her  artifice  is  unfailing.  As  a  result  of 
this  profound  meditation,  Eosalie  thought  she  would  go  to 
confession.  Next  morning,  after  mass,  she  had  a  brief  inter- 
view with  the  Abbe  Giroud  at  Saint-Pierre,  and  managed  so 
ingeniously  that  the  hour  of  her  confession  was  fixed  for 
Sunday  morning  at  half-past  seven,  before  the  eight  o'clock 
Mass.  She  committed  herself  to  a  dozen  fibs  in  order  to  find 
herself,  just  for  once,  in  the  church  at  the  hour  when  the 
lawyer  came  to  Mass.  Then  she  was  seized  with  an  impulse  of 
extreme  affection  for  her  father;  she  went  to  see  him  in  his 
workroom,  and  asked  him  for  all  sorts  of  information  on  the 
art  of  turning,  ending  by  advising  him  to  turn  larger  pieces, 
columns.  After  persuading  her  father  to  set  to  work  on  some 
twisted  pillars,  one  of  the  difficulties  of  the  turner's  art,  she 
suggested  that  he  should  make  use  of  a  large  heap  of  stones 
that  lay  in  the  middle  of  the  garden  to  construct  a  sort  of 
grotto  on  which  he  might  erect  a  little  temple  or  Belvedere  in 
which  his  twisted  pillars  could  be  used  and  shown  off  to  all 
the  world. 

At  the  climax  of  the  pleasure  the  poor  unoccupied  man  de- 
rived from  this  scheme,  Eosalie  said,  as  she  kissed  him,  "Above 
all,  do  not  tell  mamma  who  gave  you  the  notion;  she  would 
scold  me." 

"Do  not  be  afraid !"  replied  Monsieur  de  Watteville,  who 
groaned  as  bitterly  as  his  daughter  under  the  tyranny  of  the 
terrible  descendant  of  the  Eupts. 

So  Eosalie  had  a  certain  prospect  of  seeing  ere  long  a 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  293 

charming  observatory  built,  whence  her  eye  would  command 
the  lawyer's  private  room.  And  there  are  men  for  whose  sake 
young  girls  can  carry  out  such  masterstrokes  of  diplomacy, 
while,  for  the  most  part,  like  Albert  Savaron,  they  know  it 
not. 

The  Sunday  so  impatiently  looked  for  arrived,  and  Rosalie 
dressed  with  such  carefulness  as  made  Mariette,  the  ladies'- 
maid,  smile. 

"It  is  the  first  time  I  ever  knew  mademoiselle  to  be  so 
fidgety,"  said  Mariette. 

"It  strikes  me,"  said  Rosalie,  with  a  glance  at  Mariette, 
which  brought  poppies  to  her  cheeks,  "that  you  too  are  more 
particular  on  some  days  than  on  others." 

As  she  went  down  the  steps,  across  the  courtyard,  and 
through  the  gates,  Rosalie's  heart  beat,  as  everybody's  does 
in  anticipation  of  a  great  event.  Hitherto,  she  had  never 
known  what  it  was  to  walk  in  the  streets;  for  a  moment  she 
had  felt  as  though  her  mother  must  read  her  schemes  on  her 
brow,  and  forbid  her  going  to  confession,  and  she  now  felt  new 
blood  in  her  feet,  she  lifted  them  as  though  she  trod  on  fire. 
She  had,  of  course,  arranged  to  be  with  her  confessor  at  a 
quarter-past  eight,  telling  her  mother  eight,  so  as  to  have 
about  a  quarter  of  an  hour  near  Albert.  She  got  to  church 
before  Mass,  and  after  a  short  prayer,  went  to  see  if  the  Abbe 
Giroud  were  in  his  confessional,  simply  to  pass  the  time;  and 
she  thus  placed  herself  in  such  a  way  as  to  see  Albert  as  he 
came  into  church. 

The  man  must  have  been  atrociously  ugly  who  did  not 
seem  handsome  to  Mademoiselle  de  Watteville  in  the  frame  of 
mind  produced  by  her  curiosity.  And  Albert  Savaron,  who 
was  really  very  striking,  made  all  the  more  impression  on 
Rosalie  because  his  mien,  his  walk,  his  carriage,  everything 
down  to  his  clothing,  had  the  indescribable  stamp  which 
can  only  be  expressed  by  the  word  Mystery. 

He  came  in.  The  church,  till  now  gloomy,  seemed  to 
Rosalie  to  be  illuminated.  The  girl  was  fascinated  by  his 
slow  and  solemn  demeanor,  as  of  a  man  who  bears  a  world  on 


294  ALBERT  SAYARUS 

his  shoulders,  and  whose  deep  gaze,  whose  very  gestures,  com- 
bine to  express  a  devastating  or  absorbing  thought.  Eosalie 
now  understood  the  Vicar-General's  words  in  their  fullest 
extent.  Yes,  those  eyes  of  tawny  brown,  shot  with  golden 
lights,  covered  ardor  which  revealed  itself  in  sudden  flashes. 
Eosalie,  with  a  recklessness  which  Mariette  noted,  stood 
in  the  lawyer's  way,  so  as  to  exchange  glances  with  him ;  and 
this  glance  turned  her  blood,  for  it  seethed  and  boiled  as 
though  its  warmth  were  doubled. 

As  soon  as  Albert  had  taken  a  seat,  Mademoiselle  de  Watte- 
ville  quickly  found  a  place  whence  she  could  see  him  perfectly 
during  all  the  time  the  Abbe  might  leave  her.  When  Mariette 
said,  "Here  is  Monsieur  Giroud,"  it  seemed  to  Rosalie  that  the 
interview  had  lasted  no  more  than  a  few  minutes.  By  the 
time  she  came  out  from  the  confessional,  Mass  was  over. 
Albert  had  left  the  church. 

"The  Vicar-General  was  right,"  thought  she.  "He  is  un- 
happy. Why  should  this  eagle — for  he  has  the  eyes  of  an 
eagle — swoop  down  on  Besangon?  Oh,  I  must  know  every- 
thing! But  how?" 

Under  the  smart  of  this  new  desire  Eosalie  set  the  stitches 
of  her  worsted- work  with  exquisite  precision,  and  hid  her 
meditations  under  a  little  innocent  air,  which  shammed 
simplicity  to  deceive  Madame  de  Watteville. 

From  that  Sunday,  when  Mademoiselle  de  Watteville  had 
met  that  look,  or,  if  you  please,  received  this  baptism  of  fire 
— a  fine  expression  of  Napoleon's  which  may  be  well  applied 
to  love — she  eagerly  promoted  the  plan  for  the  Belvedere. 

"Mamma,"  said  she  one  day  when  two  columns  were  turned, 
"my  father  has  taken  a  singular  idea  into  his  head;  he  is 
turning  columns  for  a  Belvedere  he  intends  to  erect  on  the 
heap  of  stones  in  the  middle  of  the  garden.  Do  you  approve 
of  it  ?  It  seems  to  me " 

"I  approve  of  everything  your  father  does,"  said  Madame 
de  Watteville  drily,  "and  it  is  a  wife's  duty  to  submit  to  her 
husband  even  if  she  does  not  approve  of  his  ideas.  Why 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  296 

should  1  abject  to  a  thing  which  is  of  no  importance  in  itself, 
if  only  it  amuses  Monsieur  de  Watteville?" 

''Well,  because  from  thence  we  shall  see  into  Monsieur  de 
Soulas'  rooms,  and  Monsieur  de  Soulas  will  see  us  when  we 
are  there.  Perhaps  remarks  may  be  made " 

"Do  you  presume,  Rosalie,  to  guide  your  parents,  and  think 
you  know  more  than  they  do  of  life  and  the  proprieties  ?" 

"I  say  no  more,  mamma.  Besides,  my  father  said  that 
there  would  be  a  room  in  the  grotto,  where  it  would  be  cool, 
and  where  we  can  take  coffee." 

"Your  father  has  had  an  excellent  idea,"  said  Madame 
de  Watteville,  who  forthwith  went  to  look  at  the  columns. 

She  gave  her  entire  approbation  to  the  Baron  de  Watte- 
ville's  design,  while  choosing  for  the  erection  of  this  monu- 
ment a  spot  at  the  bottom  of  the  garden,  which  could  not  be 
seen  from  Monsieur  de  Soulas'  windows,  but  whence  they 
could  perfectly  see  into  Albert  Savaron's  rooms.  A  builder 
was  sent  for,  who  undertook  to  construct  a  grotto,  of  which 
the  top  should  be  reached  by  a  path  three  feet  wide  through 
the  rock-work,  where  periwinkles  would  grow,  iris,  clematis, 
ivy,  honeysuckle,  and  Virginia  creeper.  The  Baroness  de- 
sired that  the  inside  should  be  lined  with  rustic  wood-work, 
such  as  was  then  the  fashion  for  flower-stands,  with  a  looking- 
glass  against  the  wall,  an  ottoman  forming  a  box,  and  a  table 
of  inlaid  bark.  Monsieur  de  Soulas  proposed  that  the  floor 
should  be  of  asphalt.  Rosalie  suggested  a  hanging  chandelier 
of  rustic  wood. 

"The  Wattevilles  are  having  something  charming  done  in 
their  garden,"  was  rumored  in  Besangon. 

"They  are  rich,  and  can  afford  a  thousand  crowns  for  a 
whim " 

"A  thousand  crowns!"  exclaimed  Madame  de  Chavon- 
court. 

"Yes,  a  thousand  crowns,"  cried  young  Monsieur  de  Soulas. 
"A  man  has  been  sent  for  from  Paris  to  rusticate  the  interior, 
but  it  will  be  very  pretty.  Monsieur  de  Watteville  himself 
is  making  the  chandelier,  and  has  begun  to  carve  the  wood." 


296  ALBERT  SAYARUS 

"Berquet  is  to  make  a  cellar  under  it,"  said  an  Abb6. 

"No,"  replied  young  Monsieur  de  Soulas,  "he  is  raising  the 
kiosk  on  a  concrete  foundation,  that  it  may  not  be  damp." 

"You  know  the  very  least  things  that  are  done  in  that 
house,"  said  Madame  de  Chavoncourt  sourly,  as  she  looked 
at  one  of  her  great  girls  waiting  to  be  married  for  a  year  past. 

Mademoiselle  de  Watteville,  with  a  little  flush  of  pride  in 
thinking  of  the  success  of  her  Belvedere,  discerned  in  her- 
self a  vast  superiority  over  every  one  about  her.  No  one 
guessed  that  a  little  girl,  supposed  to  be  a  witless  goose,  had 
simply  made  up  her  mind  to  get  a  closer  view  of  the  lawyer 
Savaron's  private  study. 

Albert  Savaron's  brilliant  defence  of  the  Cathedral  Chapter 
was  all  the  sooner  forgotten  because  the  envy  of  other  lawyers 
was  aroused.  Also,  Savaron,  faithful  to  his  seclusion,  went 
nowhere.  Having  no  friends  to  cry  him  up,  and  seeing  no 
one,  he  increased  the  chances  of  being  forgotten  which  are 
common  to  strangers  in  such  a  town  as  Besangon.  Never- 
theless, he  pleaded  three  times  at  the  Commercial  Tribunal 
in  three  knotty  cases  which  had  to  be  carried  to  the  superior 
Court.  He  thus  gained  as  clients  four  of  the  chief  merchants 
of  the  place,  who  discerned  in  him  so  much  good  sense  and 
sound  legal  purview  that  they  placed  their  claims  in  his  hands. 

On  the  day  when  the  Watteville  family  inaugurated  the 
Belvedere,  Savaron  also  was  founding  a  monument.  Thanks 
to  the  connections  he  had  obscurely  formed  among  the  upper 
class  of  merchants  in  Besangon,  he  was  starting  a  fortnightly 
paper,  called  the  Eastern  Review,  with  the  help  of  forty  shares 
of  five  hundred  francs  each,  taken  up  by  his  first  ten  clients, 
on  whom  he  had  impressed  the  necessity  for  promoting  the 
interests  of  Besangon,  the  town  where  the  traffic  should  meet 
between  Mulhouse  and  Lyons,  and  the  chief  centre  between 
Mulhouse  and  Rhone. 

To  compete  with  Strasbourg,  was  it  not  needful  that 
Besangon  should  become  a  focus  of  enlightenment  as  well  as 
of  trade?  The  leading  questions  relating  to  the  interests 
of  Eastern  France  could  only  be  dealt  with  in  a  review. 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  297 

What  a  glorious  task  to  rob  Strasbourg  and  Dijon  of  their 
literary  importance,  to  bring  light  to  the  East  of  France, 
and  compete  with  the  centralizing  influence  of  Paris !  These 
reflections,  put  forward  by  Albert,  were  repeated  by  the  ten 
merchants,  who  believed  them  to  be  their  own. 

Monsieur  Savaron  did  not  commit  the  blunder  of  putting 
his  name  in  front;  he  left  the  finances  of  the  concern  to  his 
chief  client,  Monsieur  Boucher,  connected  by  marriage  with 
one  of  the  great  publishers  of  important  ecclesiastical  works ; 
but  he  kept  the  editorship,  with  a  share  of  the  profits  as 
founder.  The  commercial  interest  appealed  to  Dole,  to 
Dijon,  to  Salins,  to  Neufchatel,  to  the  Jura,  Bourg,  Nantua, 
Lous-le-Saulnier.  The  concurrence  was  invited  of  the  learn- 
ing and  energy  of  every  scientific  student  in  the  districts  of 
le  Bugey,  la  Bresse,  and  Franche  Comte.  By  the  influence 
of  commercial  interests  and  common  feeling,  five  hundred 
subscribers  were  booked  in  consideration  of  the  low  price ;  the 
Review  cost  eight  francs  a  quarter. 

To  avoid  hurting  the  conceit  of  the  provincials  by  refusing 
their  articles,  the  lawyer  hit  on  the  good  idea  of  suggesting  a 
desire  for  the  literary  management  of  this  Review  to  Monsieur 
Boucher's  eldest  son,  a  young  man  of  two-and-twenty,  very 
eager  for  fame,  to  whom  the  snares  and  woes  of  literary 
responsibilities  were  utterly  unknown.  Albert  quietly  kept 
the  upper  hand,  and  made  Alfred  Boucher  his  devoted  adher- 
ent. Alfred  was  the  only  man  in  Besangon  with  whom  the 
king  of  the  bar  was  on  familiar  terms.  Alfred  came  in  the 
morning  to  discuss  the  articles  for  the  next  number  with 
Albert  in  the  garden.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  the  trial 
number  contained  a  "Meditation"  by  Alfred,  which  Savaron 
approved.  In  his  conversations  with  Alfred,  Albert  would 
let  drop  some  great  ideas,  subjects  for  articles  of  which  Alfred 
availed  himself.  And  thus  the  merchant's  son  fancied  he  was 
making  capital  out  of  the  great  man.  To  Alfred,  Albert  was 
a  man  of  genius,  of  profound  politics.  The  commercial  world, 
enchanted  at  the  success  of  the  Review,  had  to  pay  up  only 
three-tenths  of  their  shares.  Two  hundred  more  subscribers, 


298  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

and  the  periodical  would  pay  a  dividend  to  the  share-holders 
of  five  per  cent.,  the  editor  remaining  unpaid.  This  editing, 
indeed,  was  beyond  price. 

After  the  third  number  the  Review  was  recognized  for 
exchange  by  all  the  papers  published  in  France,  which  Albert 
henceforth  read  at  home.  This  third  number  included  a  tale 
signed  "A.  S.,"  and  attributed  to  the  famous  lawyer.  In 
spite  of  the  small  attention  paid  by  the  higher  circle  of 
Besangon  to  the  Review,  which  was  accused  of  Liberal  views, 
this,  the  first  novel  produced  in  the  county,  came  under 
discussion  that  mid-winter  at  Madame  de  Chavoncourt's. 

"Papa,"  said  Eosalie,  "a  Review  is  published  in  Besangon; 
you  ought  to  take  it  in ;  and  keep  it  in  your  room,  for  mamma 
would  not  let  me  read  it,  but  you  will  lend  it  to  me." 

Monsieur  de  Watteville,  eager  to  obey  his  dear  Rosalie,  who 
for  the  last  five  months  had  given  him  so  many  proofs  of 
filial  affection, — Monsieur  de  Watteville  went  in  person  to 
subscribe  for  a  year  to  the  Eastern  Review,  and  lent  the  four 
numbers  already  out  to  his  daughter.  In  the  course  of  the 
night  Rosalie  devoured  the  tale — the  first  she  had  ever  read 
in  her  life — but  she  had  only  known  life  for  two  months  past. 
Hence  the  effect  produced  on  her  by  this  work  must  not  be 
judged  by  ordinary  rules.  Without  prejudice  of  any  kind 
as  to  the  greater  or  less  merit  of  this  composition  from  the 
pen  of  a  Parisian  who  had  thus  imported  into  the  province  the 
manner,  the  brilliancy,  if  you  will,  of  the  new  literary  school, 
it  could  not  fail  to  be  a  masterpiece  to  a  young  girl  abandon- 
ing all  her  intelligence  and  her  innocent  heart  to  her  first 
reading  of  this  kind. 

Also,  from  what  she  had  heard  said,  Rosalie  had  by  intuition 
conceived  a  notion  of  it  which  strangely  enhanced  the  interest 
of  this  novel.  She  hoped  to  find  in  it  the  sentiments,  and  per- 
haps something  of  the  life  of  Albert.  From  the  first  pages 
this  opinion  took  so  strong  a  hold  on  her,  that  after  reading 
the  fragment  to  the  end  she  was  certain  that  it  was  no  mis- 
take. Here,  then,  is  this  confession,  in  which,  according  to 
the  critics  of  Madame  de  Chavoncourt's  drawing-room,  Albert 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  299 

had  imitated  some  modern  writers  who,  for  lack  of  inventive- 
ness, relate  their  private  joys,  their  private  griefs,  or  the 
mysterious  events  of  their  own  life. 


AMBITION  FOR  LOVE  S  SAKE 

In  1823  two  young  men,  having  agreed  as  a  plan  for  a  holi- 
day to  make  a  tour  through  Switzerland,  set  out  from  Lucerne 
one  fine  morning  in  the  month  of  July  in  a  boat  pulled  by 
three  oarsmen.  They  started  for  Fluelen,  intending  to  stop 
at  every  notable  spot  on  the  lake  of  the  Four  Cantons.  The 
views  which  shut  in  the  waters  on  the  way  from  Lucerne  to 
Fluelen  offer  every  combination  that  the  most  exacting  fancy 
can  demand  of  mountains  and  rivers,  lakes  and  rocks,  brooks 
and  pastures,  trees  and  torrents.  Here  are  austere  solitudes 
and  charming  headlands,  smiling  and  trimly  kept  meadows, 
forests  crowning  perpendicular  granite  cliffs,  like  plumes, 
deserted  but  verdant  reaches  opening  out,  and  valleys  whose 
beauty  seems  the  lovelier  in  the  dreamy  distance. 

As  they  passed  the  pretty  hamlet  of  Gersau,  one  of  the 
friends  looked  for  a  long  time  at  a  wooden  house  which  seemed 
to  have  been  recently  built,  enclosed  by  a  paling,  and  standing 
on  a  promontory,  almost  bathed  by  the  waters.  As  the  boat 
rowed  past,  a  woman's  head  was  raised  against  the  back- 
ground of  the  room  on  the  upper  story  of  this  house,  to  admire 
the  effect  of  the  boat  on  the  lake.  One  of  the  young  men  met 
the  glance  thus  indifferently  given  by  the  unknown  fair. 

"Let  us  stop  here/'  said  he  to  his  friend.  "We  meant  to 
make  Lucerne  our  headquarters  for  seeing  Switzerland;  you 
will  not  take  it  amiss,  Leopold,  if  I  change  my  mind  and  stay 
here  to  take  charge  of  our  possessions.  Then  you  can  go 
where  you  please;  my  journey  is  ended.  Pull  to  land,  men, 
and  put  us  out  at  this  village ;  we  will  breakfast  here.  I  will 
go  back  to  Lucerne  to  fetch  all  our  luggage,  and  before  you 
leave  you  will  know  in  which  house  I  take  a  lodging,  where 
you  will  find  me  on  your  return." 


800  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

"Here  or  at  Lucerne,"  replied  Leopold,  "the  difference  is 
not  so  great  that  I  need  hinder  you  from  following  your 
whim." 

These  two  youths  were  friends  in  the  truest  sense  of  the 
word.  They  were  of  the  same  age;  they  had  learned  at  the 
same  school;  and  after  studying  the  law,  they  were  spending 
their  holiday  in  the  classical  tour  in  Switzerland.  Leopold, 
by  his  father's  determination,  was  already  pledged  to  a  place 
in  a  notary's  office  in  Paris.  His  spirit  of  rectitude,  his 
gentleness,  and  the  coolness  of  his  senses  and  his  brain,  guar- 
anteed him  to  be  a  docile  pupil.  Leopold  could  see  himself  a 
notary  in  Paris;  his  life  lay  before  him  like  one  of  the  high- 
roads that  cross  the  plains  of  France,  and  he  looked  along  its 
whole  length  with  philosophical  resignation. 

The  character  of  his  companion,  whom  we  will  call 
Eodolphe,  presented  a  strong  contrast  with  Leopold's,  and 
their  antagonism  had  no  doubt  had  the  result  of  tightening 
the  bond  that  united  them.  Kodolphe  was  the  natural  son 
of  a  man  of  rank,  who  was  carried  off  by  a  premature 
death  before  he  could  make  any  arrangements  for  securing 
the  means  of  existence  to  a  woman  he  fondly  loved  and  to 
Rodolphe.  Thus  cheated  by  a  stroke  of  fate,  Rodolphe's 
mother  had  recourse  to  a  heroic  measure.  She  sold  every- 
thing she  owed  to  the  munificence  of  her  child's  father  for  a 
sum  of  more  than  a  hundred  thousand  francs,  bought  with 
it  a  life  annuity  for  herself  at  a  high  rate,  and  thus  acquired 
an  income  of  about  fifteen  thousand  francs,  resolving  to  devote 
the  whole  of  it  to  the  education  of  her  son,  so  as  to  give  him 
all  the  personal  advantages  that  might  help  to  make  his 
fortune,  while  saving,  by  strict  economy,  a  small  capital  to  be 
his  when  he  came  of  age.  It  was  bold;  it  was  counting  on  her 
own  life;  but  without  this  boldness  the  good  mother  would 
certainly  have  found  it  impossible  to  live  and  to  bring  her 
child  up  suitably,  and  he  was  her  only  hope,  her  future,  the 
spring  of  all  her  joys. 

Rodolphe,  the  son  of  a  most  charming  Parisian  woman, 
and  a  man  of  mark,  a  nobleman  of  Brabant,  was  cursed  with 


ALBERT  SAYARUS  301 

extreme  sensitiveness.  From  his  infanc}r  he  had  in  everything 
shown  a  most  ardent  nature.  In  him  mere  desire  became  a 
guiding  force  and  the  motive  power  of  his  whole  being,  the 
stimulus  to  his  imagination,  the  reason  of  his  actions.  Not- 
withstanding the  pains  taken  by  a  clever  mother,  who  was 
alarmed  when  she  detected  this  predisposition,  Eodolphe 
wished  for  things  as  a  poet  imagines,  as  a  mathematician  cal- 
culates, as  a  painter  sketches,  as  a  musician  creates  melodies. 
Tender-hearted,  like  his  mother,  he  dashed  with  inconceivable 
violence  and  impetus  of  thought  after  the  object  of  his  desires; 
he  annihilated  time.  While  dreaming  of  the  fulfilment  of  his 
schemes,  he  always  overlooked  the  means  of  attainment. 
"When  my  son  has  children,"  said  his  mother,  "he  will  want 
them  born  grown  up." 

This  fine  frenzy,  carefully  directed,  enabled  Eodolphe  to 
achieve  his  studies  with  brilliant  results,  and  to  become  what 
the  English  call  an  accomplished  gentleman.  His  mother  was 
then  proud  of  him,  though  still  fearing  a  catastrophe  if  ever  a 
passion  should  possess  a  heart  at  once  so  tender  and  so 
susceptible,  so  vehement  and  so  kind.  Therefore,  the  judi- 
cious mother  had  encouraged  the  friendship  which  bound  Leo- 
pold to  Eodolphe  and  Eodolphe  to  Leopold,  since  she  saw  in 
the  cold  and  faithful  young  notary  a  guardian,  a  comrade, 
who  might  to  a  certain  extent  take  her  place  if  by  some  mis- 
fortune she  should  be  lost  to  her  son.  Bodolphe's  mother, 
still  handsome  at  three-and-forty,  had  inspired  Leopold  with 
an  ardent  passion.  This  circumstance  made  the  two  young 
men  even  more  intimate. 

So  Leopold,  knowing  Eodolphe  well,  was  not  surprised  to 
find  him  stopping  at  a  village  and  giving  up  the  projected 
journey  to  Saint-Gothard,  on  the  strength  of  a  single  glance 
at  the  upper  window  of  a  house.  While  breakfast  was  pre- 
pared for  them  at  the  Swan  Inn,  the  friends  walked  round 
the  hamlet  and  came  to  the  neighborhood  of  the  pretty  new 
house;  here,  while  gazing  about  him  and  talking  to  the  in- 
habitants, Eodolphe  discovered  the  residence  of  some  decent 
folk,  who  were  willing  to  take  him  as  a  boarder,  a  verr 


302  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

frequent  custom  in  Switzerland.  They  offered  him  a  bed- 
room looking  over  the  lake  and  the  mountains,  and  from 
whence  he  had  a  view  of  one  of  those  immense  sweeping 
reaches  which,  in  this  lake,  are  the  admiration  of  every 
traveler.  This  house  was  divided  by  a  roadway  and  a  little 
creek  from  the  new  house,  where  Rodolphe  had  caught  sight 
of  the  unknown  fair  one's  face. 

For  a  hundred  francs  a  month  Eodolphe  was  relieved  of 
all  thought  for  the  necessaries  of  life.  But,  in  consideration 
of  the  outlay  the  Stopfer  couple  expected  to  make,  they 
bargained  for  three  months'  residence  and  a  month's  pay- 
ment in  advance.  Rub  a  Swiss  never  so  little,  and  you  find 
the  usurer.  After  breakfast,  Rodolphe  at  once  made  himself 
at  home  by  depositing  in  his  room  such  property  as  be 
had  brought  with  him  for  the  journey  to  the  Saint-Gothard, 
and  he  watched  Leopold  as  he  set  out,  moved  by  the  spirit  of 
routine,  to  carry  out  the  excursion  for  himself  and  his  friend. 
When  Rodolphe,  sitting  on  a  fallen  rock  on  the  shore,  could  no 
longer  see  Leopold's  boat,  he  turned  to  examine  the  new  house 
with  stolen  glances,  hoping  to  see  the  fair  unknown.  Alas ! 
he  went  in  without  its  having  given  a  sign  of  life.  During 
dinner,  in  the  company  of  Monsieur  and  Madame  Stopfer, 
retired  coopers  from  Neufchatel,  he  questioned  them  as  to 
the  neighborhood,  and  ended  by  learning  all  he  wanted  to 
know  about  the  lady,  thanks  to  his  hosts'  loquacity ;  for  they 
were  ready  to  pour  out  their  budget  of  gossip  without  any 
pressing. 

The  fair  stranger's  name  was  Fanny  Lovelace.  This  name 
(pronounced  Loveless)  is  that  of  an  old  English  family,  but 
Richardson  has  given  it  to  a  creation  whose  fame  eclipses  all 
others !  Miss  Lovelace  had  come  to  settle  by  the  lake  for  her 
father's  health,  the  physicians  having  recommended  him  the 
air  of  Lucerne.  These  two  English  people  had  arrived  with 
no  other  servant  than  a  little  girl  of  fourteen,  a  dumb  child, 
much  attached  to  Miss  Fanny,  on  whom  she  waited  very  intel- 
ligently, and  had  settled,  two  winters  since,  with  Monsieur  and 
Madame  Bergmann,  the  retired  head-gardeners  of  His 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  303 

Excellency  Count  Borromeo  of  Isola  Bella  and  Isola  Madre 
in  the  Lago  Maggoire.  These  Swiss,  who  were  possessed  of 
an  income  of  about  a  thousand  crowns  a  year,  had  let  the 
top  story  of  their  house  to  the  Lovelaces  for  three  years,  at 
a  rent  of  two  hundred  francs  a  year.  Old  Lovelace,  a  man  of 
ninety,  and  much  broken,  was  too  poor  to  allow  himself  any 
gratifications,  and  very  rarely  went  out ;  his  daughter  worked 
to  maintain  him,  translating  English  books,  and  writing  some 
herself,  it  was  said.  The  Lovelaces  could  not  afford  to  hire 
boats  to  row  on  the  lake,  or  horses  and  guides  to  explore  the 
neighborhood. 

Poverty  demanding  such  privation  as  this  excites  all  the 
greater  compassion  among  the  Swiss,  because  it  deprives  them 
of  a  chance  of  profit.  The  cook  of  the  establishment  fed  the 
three  English  boarders  for  a  hundred  francs  a  month  in- 
clusive. In  Gersau  it  was  generally  believed,  however,  that 
the  gardener  and  his  wife,  in  spite  of  their  pretensions,  used 
the  cook's  name  as  a  screen  to  net  the  little  profits  of  this 
bargain.  The  Bergmanns  had  made  beautiful  gardens  round 
their  house,  and  had  built  a  hothouse.  The  flowers,  the  fruit, 
and  the  botanical  rarities  of  this  spot  were  what  had  induced 
the  young  lady  to  settle  on  it  as  she  passed  through  Gersau. 
Miss  Fanny  was  said  to  be  nineteen  years  old ;  she  was  the  old 
man's  youngest  child,  and  the  object  of  his  adulation.  About 
two  months  ago  she  had  hired  a  piano  from  Lucerne,  for  she 
seemed  to  be  crazy  about  music. 

"She  loves  flowers  and  music,  and  she  is  unmarried !" 
thought  Kodolphe ;  "what  good  luck !" 

The  next  day  Eodolphe  went  to  ask  leave  to  visit  the  hot- 
houses and  gardens,  which  were  beginning  to  be  soniewhat 
famous.  The  permission  was  not  immediately  granted.  The 
retired  gardeners  asked,  strangely  enough,  to  see  Rodolphe's 
passport;  it  was  sent  to  them  at  once.  The  paper  was  not 
returned  to  him  till  next  morning,  by  the  hands  of  the  cook, 
who  expressed  her  master's  pleasure  in  showing  him  their 
place.  Eodolphe  went  to  the  Bergmanns',  not  without  a  cer- 
tain trepidation,  known  only  to  persons  of  strong  feelings, 


304  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

who  go  through  as  much  passion  in  a  moment  as  some  men 
experience  in  a  whole  lifetime. 

After  dressing  himself  carefully  to  gratify  the  old  gar- 
deners of  the  Borromean  Islands,  whom  he  regarded  as  the 
warders  of  his  treasure,  he  went  all  over  the  grounds,  looking 
at  the  house  now  and  again,  but  with  much  caution;  the  old 
couple  treated  him  with  evident  distrust.  But  his  attention 
was  soon  attracted  by  the  little  English  deaf-mute,  in  whom 
his  discernment,  though  young  as  yet,  enabled  him  to  recog- 
nize a  girl  of  African,  or  at  least  of  Sicilian,  origin.  The 
child  had  the  golden-brown  color  of  a  Havana  cigar,  eyes  of 
fire,  Armenian  eyelids  with  lashes  of  very  un-British  length, 
hair  blacker  than  black;  and  under  this  almost  olive  skin, 
sinews  of  extraordinary  strength  and  feverish  alertness.  She 
looked  at  Eodolphe  with  amazing  curiosity  and  effrontery, 
watching  his  every  movement. 

"To  whom  does  that  little  Moresco  belong?"  he  asked 
worthy  Madame  Bergmann. 

"To  the  English,"  Monsieur  Bergmann  replied. 

"But  she  never  was  born  in  England  !" 

"They  may  have  brought  her  from  the  Indies,"  said  Ma- 
dame Bergmann. 

"I  have  been  told  that  Miss  Lovelace  is  fond  of  music.  I 
should  be  delighted  if,  during  the  residence  by  the  lake  to 
which  I  am  condemned  by  my  doctor's  orders,  she  would  allow 
me  to  join  her." 

"The}r  receive  no  one,  and  will  not  see  anybody,"  said  the 
old  gardener. 

Rodolphe  bit  his  lips  and  went  away,  without  having  been 
invited  into  the  house,  or  taken  into  the  part  of  the  garden 
that  lay  between  the  front  of  the  house  and  the  shore  of  the 
little  promontory.  On  that  side  the  house  had  a  balcony 
above  the  first  floor,  made  of  wood,  and  covered  by  the  roof, 
which  projected  deeply  like  the  roof  of  a  chalet  on  all  four 
sides  of  the  building,  in  the  Swiss  fashion.  Rodolphe  had 
loudly  praised  the  elegance  of  this  arrangement,  and  talked 
of  the  view  from  that  balcony,  but  all  in  vain.  When  he  had 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  305 

taken  leave  of  the  Bergmanns  it  struck  him  that  he  was  a 
simpleton,  like  any  man  of  spirit  and  imagination  disap- 
pointed of  the  results  of  a  plan  which  he  had  believed  would 
succeed. 

In  the  evening  he,  of  course,  went  out  in  a  boat  on  the 
lake,  round  and  about  the  spit  of  land,  to  Brunnen  and  to 
Schwytz,  and  came  in  at  nightfall.  From  afar  he  saw  the 
window  open  and  brightly  lighted;  he  heard  the  sound  of  a 
piano  and  the  tones  of  an  exquisite  voice.  He  made  the  boat- 
man stop,  and  gave  himself  up  to  the  pleasure  of  listening 
to  an  Italian  air  delightfully  sung.  When  the  singing  ceased, 
Eodolphe  landed  and  sent  away  the  boat  and  rowers.  At 
the  cost  of  wetting  his  feet,  he  went  to  sit  down  under  the 
water-worn  granite  shelf  crowned  by  a  thick  hedge  of  thorny 
acacia,  by  the  side  of  which  ran  a  long  lime  avenue  in  the 
Bergmanns'  garden.  By  the  end  of  an  hour  he  heard  steps 
and  voices  just  above  him,  but  the  words  that  reached  his 
ears  were  all  Italian,  and  spoken  by  two  women. 

He  took  advantage  of  the  moment  when  the  two  speakers 
were  at  one  end  of  the  walk  to  slip  noiselessly  to  the  other. 
After  half  an  hour  of  struggling  he  got  to  the  end  of  the 
avenue,  and  there  took  up  a  position  whence,  without  being 
seen  or  heard,  he  could  watch  the  two  women  without  being 
observed  by  them  as  they  came  towards  him.  What  was 
Rodolphe's  amazement  on  recognizing  the  deaf-mute  as  one  of 
them ;  she  was  talking  to  Miss  Lovelace  in  Italian. 

It  was  now  eleven  o'clock  at  night.  The  stillness  was  so 
perfect  on  the  lake  and  around  the  dwelling,  that  the  two 
women  must  have  thought  themselves  safe;  in  all  Gersau 
there  could  be  no  eyes  open  but  theirs.  Rodolphe  supposed 
that  the  girl's  dumbness  must  be  a  necessary  deception.  From 
the  way  in  which  they  both  spoke  Italian,  Rodolphe  suspected 
that  it  was  the  mother  tongue  of  both  girls,  and  concluded 
that  the  name  of  English  also  hid  some  disguise. 

"They  are  Italian  refugees,"  said  he  to  himself,  "outlaws 
in  fear  of  the  Austrian  or  Sardinian  police.  The  young 
lady  waits  till  it  is  dark  to  walk  and  talk  in  security." 


306  4LBERT  SAVARUS 

He  lay  down  by  the  side  of  the  hedge,  and  crawled  like  a 
snake  to  find  a  way  between  two  acacia  shrubs.  At  the 
risk  of  leaving  his  coat  behind  him,  or  tearing  deep  scratches 
in  his  back,  he  got  through  the  hedge  when  the  so-called  Miss 
Fanny  and  her  pretended  deaf-and-dumb  maid  were  at  the 
other  end  of  the  path ;  then,  when  they  had  come  within  twenty 
yards  of  him  without  seeing  him,  for  he  was  in  the  shadow  of 
the  hedge,  and  the  moon  was  shining  brightly,  he  suddenly 
rose. 

"Fear  nothing,"  said  he  in  French  to  the  Italian  girl,  "I 
am  not  a  spy.  You  are  refugees,  I  have  guessed  that.  I  am 
a  Frenchman  whom  one  look  from  you  has  fixed  at  Gersau." 

Eodolphe,  startled  by  the  acute  pain  caused  by  some  steel 
instrument  piercing  his  side,  fell  like  a  log. 

"Nel  lago  con  pietra!"  said  the  terrible  dumb  girl. 

"Oh,  Gina  !"  exclaimed  the  Italian. 

"She  has  missed  me,"  said  Rodolphe,  pulling  from  the 
wound  a  stiletto,  which  had  been  turned  by  one  of  the  false 
ribs.  "But  a  little  higher  up  it  would  have  been  deep  in  my 
heart. — I  was  wrong,  Francesca,"  he  went  on,  remembering 
the  name  he  had  heard  little  Gina  repeat  several  times ;  "I  owe 
her  no  grudge,  do  not  scold  her.  The  happiness  of  speaking 
to  you  is  well  worth  the  prick  of  a  stiletto.  Only  show  me 
the  way  out ;  I  must  get  back  to  the  Stopf  ers'  house.  Be  easy ; 
I  shall  tell  nothing." 

Francesca,  recovering  from  her  astonishment,  helped  Ro- 
dolphe to  rise,  and  said  a  few  words  to  Gina,  whose  eyes  filled 
with  tears.  The  two  girls  made  him  sit  down  on  a  bench  and 
take  off  his  coat,  his  waistcoat,  and  his  cravat.  Then  Gina 
opened  his  shirt  and  sucked  the  wound  strongly.  Francesca, 
who  had  left  them,  returned  with  a  large  piece  of  sticking- 
plaster,  which  she  applied  to  the  wound. 

"You  can  walk  now  as  far  as  your  house,"  she  said. 

Each  took  an  arm,  and  Rodolphe  was  conducted  to  a  side 
gate,  of  which  the  key  was  in  Francesca's  apron  pocket. 

"Does  Gina  speak  French?"  said  Rodolphe  to  Francesca. 

"No.  But  do  not  excite  yourself,"  replied  Francesca  with 
some  impatience. 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  307 

"Let  me  look  at  you,"  said  Eodolphe  pathetically,  "for  it 
may  be  long  before  I  am  able  to  come  again " 

He  leaned  against  one  of  the  gate-posts  contemplating  the 
beautiful  Italian,  who  allowed  him  to  gaze  at  her  for  a  moment 
under  the  sweetest  silence  and  the  sweetest- night  which  ever, 
perhaps,  shone  on  this  lake,  the  king  of  Swiss  lakes. 

Francesca  was  quite  of  the  classic  Italian  type,  and  such 
as  imagination  supposes  or  pictures,  or,  if  you  will,  dreams, 
that  Italian  women  are.  What  first  struck  Eodolphe  was 
the  grace  and  elegance  of  a  figure  evidently  powerful,  though 
so  slender  as  to  appear  fragile.  An  amber  paleness  over- 
spread her  face,  betraying  sudden  interest,  but  it  did  not 
dim  the  voluptuous  glance  of  her  liquid  eyes  of  velvety  black- 
ness. A  pair  of  hands  as  beautiful  as  ever  a  Greek  sculptor 
added  to  the  polished  arms  of  a  statue  grasped  Eodolphe's 
arm,  and  their  whiteness  gleamed  against  his  black  coat. 
The  rash  Frenchman  could  but  just  discern  the  long,  oval 
shape  of  her  face,  and  a  melancholy  mouth  showing  brilliant 
teeth  between  the  parted  lips,  full,  fresh,  and  brightly  red. 
The  exquisite  lines  of  this  face  guaranteed  to  Francesca  per- 
manent beauty;  but  what  most  struck  Eodolphe  was  the 
adorable  freedom,  the  Italian  frankness  of  this  woman,  wholly 
absorbed  as  she  was  in  her  pity  for  him. 

Francesca  said  a  word  to  Gina,  who  gave  Eodolphe  her  arm 
as  far  as  the  Stopfers'  door,  and  fled  like  a  swallow  as  soon 
as  she  had  rung. 

"These  patriots  do  not  play  at  killing!"  said  Eodolphe  to 
himself  as  he  felt  his  sufferings  when  he  found  himself  in 
his  bed.  "  'Nel  lago !'  Gina  would  have  pitched  me  into  the 
lake  with  a  stone  tied  to  my  neck." 

Next  day  he  sent  to  Lucerne  for  the  best  surgeon  there, 
and  when  he  came,  enjoined  on  him  absolute  secrecy,  giving 
him  to  understand  that  his  honor  depended  on  it. 

Leopold  returned  from  his  excursion  on  the  day  when  his 
friend  first  got  out  of  bed.  Eodolphe  made  up  a  story,  and 
begged  him  to  go  to  Lucerne  to  fetch  their  luggage  and  letters. 
Leopold  brought  back  the  most  fatal,  the  most  dreadful  news : 


308  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

Rodolphe's  mother  was  dead.  While  the  two  friends  were  on 
their  way  from  Bale  to  Lucerne,  the  fatal  letter,  written  by 
Leopold's  father,  had  reached  Lucerne  the  day  they  left  for 
Fluelen. 

In  spite  of  Leopold's  utmost  precautions,  Rodolphe  fell  ill 
of  a  nervous  fever.  As  soon  as  Leopold  saw  his  friend  out 
of  danger,  he  set  out  for  France  with  a  power  of  attorney,  and 
Rodolphe  could  thus  remain  at  Gersau,  the  only  place  in  the 
world  where  his  grief  could  grow  calmer.  The  young  French- 
man's position,  his  despair,  the  circumstances  which  made 
such  a  loss  worse  for  him  than  for  any  other  man,  were  known, 
and  secured  him  the  pity  and  interest  of  every  one  in  Gersau. 
Every  morning  the  pretended  dumb  girl  came  to  see  him  and 
bring  him  news  of  her  mistress. 

As  soon  as  Rodolphe  could  go  out  he  went  to  the  Berg- 
manns'  house,  to  thank  Miss  Fanny  Lovelace  and  her  father 
for  the  interest  they  had  taken  in  his  sorrow  and  his  illness. 
For  the  first  time  since  he  had  lodged  with  the  Bergmanns 
the  old  Italian  admitted  a  stranger  to  his  room,  where  Ro- 
dolphe was  received  with  the  cordiality  due  to  his  misfor- 
tunes and  to  his  being  a  Frenchman,  which  excluded  all  dis- 
trust of  him.  Francesca  looked  so  lovety  by  candle-light  that 
first  evening  that  she  shed  a  ray  of  brightness  on  his  grieving 
heart.  Her  smiles  flung  the  roses  of  hope  on  his  woe.  She 
sang,  not  indeed  gay  songs,  but  grave  and  solemn  melodies 
suited  to  the  state  of  Rodolphe's  heart,  and  he  observed  this 
touching  care. 

At  about  eight  o'clock  the  old  man  left  the  young  people 
without  any  sign  of  uneasiness,  and  went  to  his  room.  When 
Francesca  was  tired  of  singing,  she  led  Rodolphe  on  to  the 
balcony,  whence  they  perceived  the  sublime  scenery  of  the 
lake,  and  signed  to  him  to  be  seated  by  her  on  a  rustic  wooden 
bench. 

"Am  I  very  indiscreet  in  asking  how  old  you  are,  cara  Fran- 
cesca?" said  Rodolphe. 

"Nineteen,"  said  she,  "well  past." 

"If  anything  in  the  world  could  soothe  my  sorrow/'  he 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  309 

went  on,  "it  would  be  the  hope  of  winning  you  from  your 
father,  whatever  your  fortune  may  be.  So  beautiful  as  you 
are,  you  seem  to  be  richer  than  a  prince's  daughter.  And  I 
tremble  as  I  confess  to  you  the  feelings  with  which  you  have 
inspired  me;  but  they  are  deep — they  are  eternal." 

"Zitto!"  said  Francesca,  laying  a  finger  of  her  right  hand 
on  her  lips.  "Say  no  more ;  I  am  not  free  I  have  been  married 
these  three  years." 

For  a  few  minutes  utter  silence  reigned.  When  the  Italian 
girl,  alarmed  at  Eodolphe's  stillness,  went  close  to  him,  she 
found  that  he  had  fainted. 

"Povero  !"  she  said  to  herself.     "And  I  thought  him  cold." 

She  fetched  some  salts,  and  revived  Rodolphe  by  making 
him  smell  at  them. 

"Married!"  said  Rodolphe,  looking  at  Francesca.  And 
then  his  tears  flowed  freely. 

"Child !"  said  she.     "But  there  still  is  hope.     My  husband 

"Eighty  ?"  Rodolphe  put  in. 

"No,"  said  she  with  a  smile,  "but  sixty-five.  He  has  dis- 
guised himself  as  much  older  to  mislead  the  police." 

"Dearest,"  said  Rodolphe,  "a  few  more  shocks  of  this  kind 
and  I  shall  die.  Only  when  you  have  known  me  twenty 
years  will  you  understand  the  strength  and  power  of  my  heart, 
and  the  nature  of  its  aspirations  for  happiness.  This  plant," 
he  went  on,  pointing  to  the  yellow  jasmine  which  covered  the 
balustrade,  "does  not  climb  more  eagerly  to  spread  itself  in 
the  sunbeams  than  I  have  clung  to  you  for  this  month  past. 
I  love  you  with  unique  passion.  That  love  will  be  the  secret 
fount  of  my  life — I  may  possibly  die  of  it." 

"Oh !  Frenchman,  Frenchman !"  said  she,  emphasizing  her 
exclamation  with  a  little  incredulous  grimace. 

"Shall  I  not  be  forced  to  wait,  to  accept  you  at  the  hands  of 
time  ?"  said  he  gravely.  "But  know  this :  if  you  are  in  earnest 
in  what  you  have  allowed  to  escape  you,  I  will  wait  for  you 
faithfully,  without  suffering  any  other  attachment  to  grow  up 
in  my  heart." 


310  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

She  looked  at  him  doubtfully. 

"None,"  said  he,  "not  even  a  passing"  fancy.  I  have  my 
fortune  to  make;  you  must  have  a  splendid  one,  nature 
created  you  a  princess ' 

At  this  word  Francesca  could  not  repress  a  faint  smile, 
which  gave  her  face  the  most  bewitching  expression,  something 
subtle,  like  what  the  great  Leonardo  has  so  well  depicted  in 
the  Gioconda.  This  smile  made  Rodolphe  pause.  "Ah  yes  !" 
he  went  on,  "you  must  suffer  much  from  the  destitution  to 
which  exile  has  brought  you.  Oh,  if  you  would  make  me 
happy  above  all  men,  and  consecrate  my  love,  you  would  treat 
me  as  a  friend.  Ought  I  not  to  be  your  friend? — My  poor 
mother  has  left  sixty  thousand  francs  of  savings ;  take  half." 

Francesca  looked  steadily  at  him.  This  piercing  gaze  went 
to  the  bottom  of  Eodolphe's  soul. 

"We  want  nothing ;  my  work  amply  supplies  our  luxuries," 
she  replied  in  a  grave  voice. 

"And  can  I  endure  that  a  Francesca  should  work  ?"  cried  he. 
"One  day  you  will  return  to  your  country  and  find  all  you 
left  there."  Again  the  Italian  girl  looked  at  Rodolphe.  "And 
you  will  then  repay  me  what  you  may  have  condescended  to 
borrow,"  he  added,  with  an  expression  full  of  delicate  feel- 
ing. 

"Let  us  drop  the  subject,"  said  she,  with  incomparable 
dignity  of  gesture,  expression,  and  attitude.  "Make  a  splen- 
did fortune,  be  one  of  the  remarkable  men  of  your  country; 
that  is  my  desire.  Fame  is  a  drawbridge  which  may  serve 
to  cross  a  deep  gulf.  Be  ambitious  if  you  must.  I  believe 
you  have  great  and  powerful  talents,  but  use  them  rather  for 
the  happiness  of  mankind  than  to  deserve  me;  you  will  be 
all  the  greater  in  my  eyes." 

In  the  course  of  this  conversation,  which  lasted  two  hours, 
Rodolphe  discovered  that  Francesca  was  an  enthusiast  for 
Liberal  ideas,  and  for  that  worship  of  liberty  which  had  led 
to  the  three  revolutions  in  Naples,  Piemont,  and  Spain.  On 
leaving,  he  was  shown  to  the  door  by  Gina,  the  so-called  mute. 
At  eleven  o'clock  no  one  was  astir  in  the  village,  there  was 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  311 

no  fear  of  listeners;  Eodolphe  took  Gina  into  a  corner,  and 
asked  her  in  a  low  voice  and  bad  Italian,  "Who  are  your 
master  and  mistress,  child?  Tell  me,  I  will  give  you  this 
fine  new  gold  piece." 

"Monsieur,"  said  the  girl,  taking  the  coin,  "my  master  is  the 
famous  bookseller  Lamporani  of  Milan,  one  of  the  leaders  of 
the  revolution,  and  the  conspirator  of  all  others  whom  Austria 
would  most  like  to  have  in  the  Spielberg." 

"A  bookseller's  wife!  Ah,  so  much  the  better,"  thought 
he ;  "we  are  on  an  equal  footing. — And  what  is  her  family  ?" 
he  added,  "for  she  looks  like  a  queen." 

"All  Italian  women  do,"  replied  Gina  proudly.  "Her 
father's  name  is  Colonna." 

Emboldened  by  Francesca's  modest  rank,  Eodolphe  had  an 
awning  fitted  to  his  boat  and  cushions  in  the  stern.  When 
this  was  done,  the  lover  came  to  propose  to  Francesca  to  come 
out  on  the  lake.  The  Italian  accepted,  no  doubt  to  carry  out 
her  part  of  a  young  English  Miss  in  the  eyes  of  the  villagers, 
but  she  brought  Gina  with  her.  Francesca  Colonna's  lightest 
actions  betrayed  a  superior  education  and  the  highest  social 
rank.  By  the  way  in  which  she  took  her  place  at  the  end 
of  the  boat  Eodolphe  felt  himself  in  some  sort  cut  off  from 
her,  and,  in  the  face  of  a  look  of  pride  worthy  of  an  aristo- 
crat, the  familiarity  he  had  intended  fell  dead.  By  a  glance 
Francesca  made  herself  a  princess,  with  all  the  prerogatives 
she  might  have  enjoyed  in  the  Middle  Ages.  She  seemed  to 
have  read  the  thoughts  of  this  vassal  who  was  so  audacious 
as  to  constitute  himself  her  protector. 

Already,  in  the  furniture  of  the  room  where  Francesca  had 
received  him,  in  her  dress,  and  in  the  various  trifles  she  made 
use  of,  Eodolphe  had  detected  indications  of  a  superior  char- 
acter and  a  fine  fortune.  All  these  observations  now  recurred 
to  his  mind ;  he  became  thoughtful  after  having  been  trampled 
on,  as  it  were,  by  Francesca's  dignity.  Gina,  her  half-grown- 
up confidante,  also  seemed  to  have  a  mocking  expression  as 
she  gave  a  covert  or  a  side  glance  at  Eodolphe.  This  ob- 
vious disagreement  between  the  Italian  lady's  rank  and  her 


312  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

manners  was  a  fresh  puzzle  to  Kodolphe,  who  suspected  some 
further  trick  like  Gina's  assumed  dumbness. 

"Where  would  you  go,  Signora  Lamporani  ?"  he  asked. 

"Towards  Lucerne,"  replied  Franceses  in  French. 

"Good !"  said  Rodolphe  to  himself,  "she  is  not  startled  by 
hearing  me  speak  her  name ;  she  had,  no  doubt,  foreseen  that 
I  should  ask  Gina — she  is  so  cunning. — What  is  your  quarrel 
with  me  ?"  he  went  on,  going  at  last  to  sit  down  by  her  side, 
and  asking  her  by  a  gesture  to  give  him  her  hand,  which  she 
withdrew.  "You  are  cold  and  ceremonious;  what,  in  col- 
loquial language,  we  should  call  short." 

"It  is  true,"  she  replied  with  a  smile.  "I  am  wrong.  It 
is  not  good  manners;  it  is  vulgar.  In  French  you  would 
call  it  inartistic.  It  is  better  to  be  frank  than  to  harbor 
cold  or  hostile  feelings  towards  a  friend,  and  you  have  already 
proved  yourself  my  friend.  Perhaps  I  have  gone  too  far 
with  you.  You  must  have  taken  me  to  be  a  very  ordinary 
woman." — Eodolphe  made  many  signs  of  denial. — "Yes," 
said  the  bookseller's  wife,  going  on  without  noticing  this 
pantomime,  which,  however,  she  plainly  saw.  "I  have  de- 
tected that,  and  naturally  I  have  reconsidered  my  conduct. 
Well !  I  will  put  an  end  to  everything  by  a  few  words  of  deep 
truth.  Understand  this,  Eodolphe:  I  feel  in  myself  the 
strength  to  stifle  a  feeling  if  it  were  not  in  harmony  with  my 
ideas  or  anticipation  of  what  true  love  is.  I  could  love — as 
we  can  love  in  Italy,  but  I  know  my  duty.  No  intoxication 
can  make  me  forget  it.  Married  without  my  consent  to  that 
poor  old  man,  I  might  take  advantage  of  the  liberty  he  so 
generously  gives  me;  but  three  years  of  married  life  imply 
acceptance  of  its  laws.  Hence  the  most  vehement  passion 
would  never  make  me  utter,  even  involuntarily,  a  wish  to  find 
myself  free. 

"Emilio  knows  my  character.  He  knows  that  without 
my  heart,  which  is  my  own,  and  which  I  might  give  away,  I 
should  never  allow  anyone  to  take  my  hand.  That  is  why 
I  have  just  refused  it  to  you.  I  desire  to  be  loved  and  waited 
for  with  fidelity,  nobleness,  ardor,  while  all  I  can  give  is 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  313 

infinite  tenderness  of  which  the  expression  may  not  over- 
step the  boundary  of  the  heart,  the  permitted  neutral  ground. 
All  this  being  thoroughly  understood — Oh !"  she  went  on  with 
a  girlish  gesture,  "I  will  be  as  coquettish,  as  gay,  as  glad,  as  a 
child  which  knows  nothing  of  the  dangers  of  familiarity." 

This  plain  and  frank  declaration  was  made  in  a  tone,  an 
accent,  and  supported  by  a  look  which  gave  it  the  deepest 
stamp  of  truth. 

"A  Princess  Colonna  could  not  have  spoken  better,"  said 
Eodolphe,  smiling. 

"Is  that,"  she  answered  with  some  haughtiness,  "a  re- 
flection on  the  humbleness  of  my  birth?  Must  your  love 
flaunt  a  coat-of-arms  ?  At  Milan  the  noblest  names  are 
written  over  shop-doors :  Sforza,  Canova,  Visconti,  Trivulzio, 
Ursini;  there  are  Archintos  apothecaries;  but,  believe  me, 
though  I  keep  a  shop,  I  have  the  feelings  of  a  duchess." 

"A  reflection  ?     Nay,  rnadame,  I  meant  it  for  praise." 

"By  a  comparison  ?"  she  said  archly. 

"Ah,  once  for  all,"  said  he,  "not  to  torture  me  if  my  words 
should  ill  express  my  feelings,  understand  that  my  love  is 
perfect ;  it  carries  with  it  absolute  obedience  and  respect." 

She  bowed  as  a  woman  satisfied,  and  said,  "Then  mon- 
sieur accepts  the  treaty  ?" 

"Yes,"  said  he.  "I  can  understand  that  in  a  rich  and 
powerful  feminine  nature  the  faculty  of  loving  ought  not 
to  be  wasted,  and  that  you,  out  of  delicacy,  wished  to  re- 
strain it.  Ah !  Francesca,  at  my  age  tenderness  requited, 
and  by  so  sublime,  so  royally  beautiful  a  creature  as  you  are 
— why,  it  is  the  fulfilment  of  all  my  wishes.  To  love  you  as 
you  desire  to  be  loved — is  not  that  enough  to  make  a  young 
man  guard  himself  against  every  evil  folly  ?  Is  it  not  to  con- 
centrate all  his  powers  in  a  noble  passion,  of  which  in  the 
future  he  may  be  proud,  and  which  can  leave  none  but  lovely 
memories  ?  If  you  could  but  know  with  what  hues  you  have 
clothed  the  chain  of  Pilatus,  the  Rigi,  and  this  superb  lake — " 

"I  want  to  know,"  said  she,  with  the  Italian  artlessness 
which  has  always  a  touch  of  artfulness. 


314  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

"Well,  this  hour  will  shine  on  all  my  life  like  a  diamond 
on  a  queen's  brow." 

Francesca's  only  reply  was  to  lay  her  hand  on  Rodolphe's. 

"Oh  dearest !  for  ever  dearest ! — Tell  me,  have  you  never 
loved?" 

"Never." 

"And  you  allow  me  to  love  you  nobly,  looking  to  heaven  for 
the  utmost  fulfilment  ?"  he  asked. 

She  gently  bent  her  head.  Two  large  tears  rolled  down 
Eodolphe's  cheeks. 

"Why !  what  is  the  matter  ?"  she  cried,  abandoning  her  im- 
perial manner. 

"I  have  now  no  mother  whom  I  can  tell  of  my  happiness ; 
she  left  this  earth  without  seeing  what  would  have  mitigated 
her  agony " 

"What?"  said  she. 

"Her  tenderness  replaced  by  an  equal  tenderness " 

"Povero  mio!"  exclaimed  the  Italian,  much  touched.  "Be- 
lieve me,"  she  went  on  after  a  pause,  "it  is  a  very  sweet  thing, 
and  to  a  woman,  a  strong  element  of  fidelity  to  know  that  she 
is  all  in  all  on  earth  to  the  man  she  loves ;  to  find  him  lonely, 
with  no  family,  with  nothing  in  his  heart  but  his  love — in 
short,  to  have  him  wholly  to  herself." 

When  two  lovers  thus  understand  each  other,  the  heart  feels 
delicious  peace,  supreme  tranquillity.  Certainty  is  the  basis 
for  which  human  feelings  crave,  for  it  is  never  lacking  to 
religious  sentiment;  man  is  always  certain  of  being  fully 
repaid  by  God.  Love  never  believes  itself  secure  but  by 
this  resemblance  to  divine  love.  And  the  raptures  of  that 
moment  must  have  been  fully  felt  to  be  understood;  it  is 
unique  in  life ;  it  can  never  return  no  more,  alas !  than  the 
emotions  of  youth.  To  believe  in  a  woman,  to  make  her  your 
human  religion,  the  fount  of  life,  the  secret  luminary  of  all 
your  least  thoughts! — is  not  this  a  second  birth?  And  a 
young  man  mingles  with  this  love  a  little  of  the  feeling  he 
had  for  his  mother. 

Eodolphe  and  Francesca  for  some  time  remained  in  per- 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  315 

feet  silence,  answering  each  other  by  sympathetic  glances  full 
of  thoughts.  They  understood  each  other  in  the  midst  of  one 
of  the  most  beautiful  scenes  of  Nature,  whose  glories,  in- 
terpreted by  the  glory  in  their  hearts,  helped  to  stamp  on 
their  minds  the  most  fugitive  details  of  that  unique  hour. 
There  had  not  been  the  slightest  shade  of  frivolity  in  Fran- 
cesca's  conduct.  It  was  noble,  large,  and  without  any  second 
thought.  This  magnanimity  struck  Rodolphe  greatly,  for  in 
it  he  recognized  the  difference  between  the  Italian  and  the 
Frenchwoman.  The  waters,  the  land,  the  sky,  the  woman, 
all  were  grandiose  and  suave,  even  their  love  in  the  midst  of 
this  picture,  so  vast  in  its  expanse,  so  rich  in  detail,  where 
the  sternness  of  the  snowy  peaks  and  their  hard  folds  standing 
clearly  out  against  the  blue  sky,  reminded  Rodolphe  of  the 
circumstances  which  limited  his  happiness;  a  lovely  country 
shut  in  by  snows. 

This  delightful  intoxication  of  soul  was  destined  to  be 
disturbed.  A  boat  was  approaching  from  Lucerne ;  Gina,  who 
had  been  watching  it  attentively,  gave  a  joyful  start,  though 
faithful  to  her  part  as  a  mute.  The  bark  came  nearer ;  when 
at  length  Francesca  could  distinguish  the  faces  on  board, 
she  exclaimed,  "Tito !"  as  she  perceived  a  young  man.  She 
stood  up,  and  remained  standing  at  the  risk  of  being  drowned. 
"Tito  !  Tito  I"  cried  she,  waving  her  handkerchief. 

Tito  desired  the  boatmen  to  slacken,  and  the  two  boats 
pulled  side  by  side.  The  Italian  and  Tito  talked  with  such 
extreme  rapidity,  and  in  a  dialect  unfamiliar  to  a  man  who 
hardly  knew  even  the  Italian  of  books,  that  Rodolphe  could 
neither  hear  nor  guess  the  drift  of  this  conversation.  But 
Tito's  handsome  face,  Francesca's  familiarity,  and  Gina's 
expression  of  delight,  all  aggrieved  him.  And  indeed  no 
lover  can  help  being  ill  pleased  at  finding  himself  neglected 
for  another,  whoever  he  may  be.  Tito  tossed  a  little  leather 
bag  to  Gina,  full  of  gold  no  doubt,  and  a  packet  of  letters  to 
Francesca,  who  began  to  read  them,  with  a  farewell  wave  of 
the  hand  to  Tito. 

"Get  quickly  back  to  Gersau,"  she  said  to  the  boatmen,  "I 


316  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

will  not  let  my  poor  Emilio  pine  ten  minutes  longer  than  he 
need/' 

"What  has  happened?"  asked  Rodolphe,  as  he  saw  Fran« 
cesca  finish  reading  the  last  letter. 

"La  liberta!"  she  exclaimed,  with  an  artist's  enthusiasm. 

"E  denaro!"  added  Gina,  like  an  echo,  for  she  had  found 
her  tongue. 

"Yes,"  said  Francesca,  "no  more  poverty !  For  more  than 
eleven  months  have  I  been  working,  and  I  was  beginning  to 
be  tired  of  it.  I  am  certainly  not  a  literary  woman." 

"Who  is  this  Tito  ?"  asked  Eodolphe. 

"The  Secretary  of  State  to  the  financial  department  of  the 
humble  shop  of  the  Colonnas,  in  other  words,  the  son  of 
our  ragionato.  Poor  boy !  he  could  not  come  by  the  Saint  - 
Gothard,  nor  by  the  Mont-Cenis,  nor  by  the  Simplon;  he 
came  by  sea,  by  Marseilles,  and  had  to  cross  France. 
Well,  in  three  weeks  we  shall  be  at  Geneva,  and  living  at  our 
ease.  Come,  Eodolphe,"  she  added,  seeing  sadness  overspread 
the  Parisian's  face,  "is  not  the  Lake  of  Geneva  quite  as  good 
as  the  Lake  of  Lucerne  ?" 

"But  allow  me  to  bestow  a  regret  on  the  Bergmanns'  de- 
lightful house,"  said  Rodolphe,  pointing  to  the  little  promon- 
tory. 

"Come  and  dine  with  us  to  add  to  your  associations,  povero 
mio"  said  she.  "This  is  a  great  day ;  we  are  out  of  danger. 
My  mother  writes  that  within  a  year  there  will  be  an  amnesty. 
Oh !  la  cara  patria!" 

These  three  words  made  Gina  weep.  "Another  winter 
here,"  said  she,  "and  I  should  have  been  dead !" 

"Poor  little  Sicilian  kid !"  said  Francesca,  stroking  Gina's 
head  with  an  expression  and  an  affection  which  made  Ro- 
dolphe long  to  be  so  caressed,  even  if  it  were  without  love. 

The  boat  grounded ;  Rodolphe  sprang  on  to  the  sand,  offered 
his  hand  to  the  Italian  lady,  escorted  her  to  the  door  of  the 
Bergmanns'  house,  and  went  to  dress  and  return  as  soon  as 
possible. 

When  he  joined  the  librarian  and  his  wife,  who  were  sitting 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  317 

on  the  balcony,  Eodolphe  could  scarcely  repress  an  exclama- 
tion of  surprise  at  seeing  the  prodigious  change  which  the 
good  news  had  produced  in  the  old'man.  He  now  saw  a  man 
of  about  sixty,  extremely  well  preserved,  a  lean  Italian,  as 
straight  as  an  I,  with  hair  still  black,  though  thin  and  show- 
ing a  white  skull,  with  bright  eyes,  a  full  set  of  white  teeth, 
a  face  like  Caesar,  and  on  his  diplomatic  lips  a  sardonic  smile, 
the  almost  false  smile  under  which  a  man  of  good  breeding 
hides  his  real  feelings. 

"Here  is  my  husband  under  his  natural  form,"  said  Fran- 
cesca  gravely. 

"He  is  quite  a  new  acquaintance/'  replied  Kodolphe,  be- 
wildered. 

"Quite,"  said  the  librarian;  "I  have  played  many  a  part, 
and  know  well  how  to  make  up.  Ah !  I  played  one  in  Paris 
under  the  Empire,  with  Bourrienne,  Madame  Murat,  Madame 
d'Abrantis  e  tutte  quanti.  Everything  we  take  the  trouble 
to  learn  in  our  youth,  even  the  most  futile,  is  of  use.  If  my 
wife  had  not  received  a  man's  education — an  unheard-of  thing 
in  Italy — I  should  have  been  obliged  to  chop  wood  to  get  my 
living  here.  Povera  Francesca  !  who  would  have  told  me  that 
she  would  some  day  maintain  me !" 

As  he  listened  to  this  worthy  bookseller,  so  easy,  so  affable, 
so  hale,  Eodolphe  scented  some  mystification,  and  preserved 
the  watchful  silence  of  a  man  who  has  been  duped. 

"Che  avete,  signor?"  Francesca  asked  with  simplicity, 
"Does  our  happiness  sadden  you  ?" 

"Your  husband  is  a  young  man/'  he  whispered  in  her  ear. 

She  broke  into  such  a  frank,  infectious  laugh  that  Eodolphe 
was  still  more  puzzled. 

"He  is  but  sixty-five,  at  your  service,"  said  she ;  "but  I  can 
assure  you  that  even  that  is  something — to  be  thankful  for !" 

"I  do  not  like  to  hear  you  jest  about  an  affection  so  sacred 
as  this,  of  which  you  yourself  prescribed  the  conditions." 

"Zitto!"  said  she,  stamping  her  foot,  and  looking  whether 
her  husband  were  listening.  "Never  disturb  the  peace  of 
mind  of  that  dear  man,  as  simple  as  a  child,  and  with  whom 


318  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

I  can  do  what  I  please.  He  is  under  my  protection/'  she 
added.  "If  you  could  know  with  what  generosity  he  risked 
his  life  and  fortune  because  I  was  a  Liberal !  for  he  does  not 
share  my  political  opinions.  Is  not  that  love,  Monsieur 
Frenchman  ? — But  they  are  like  that  in  his  family.  Emilio's 
younger  brother  was  deserted  for  a  handsome  youth  by  the 
woman  he  loved.  He  thrust  his  sword  through  his  own  heart 
ten  minutes  after  he  had  said  to  his  servant,  1  could  of 
course  kill  my  rival,  but  it  would  grieve  the  Diva  too  deeply/  5) 

This  mixture  of  dignity  and  banter,  of  haughtiness  and 
playfulness,  made  Francesca  at  this  moment  the  most  fasci- 
nating creature  in  the  world.  The  dinner  and  the  evening 
were  full  of  cheerfulness,  justified,  indeed,  by  the  relief  of 
the  two  refugees,  but  depressing  to  Eodolphe. 

"Can  she  be  fickle?"  he  asked  himself  as  he  returned  to 
the  Stopfers'  house.  "She  sympathized  in  my  sorrow,  and  I 
cannot  take  part  in  her  joy !" 

He  blamed  himself,  justifying  this  girl-wife. 

"She  has  no  taint  of  hypocrisy,  and  is  carried  away  by  im- 
pulse," thought  he,  "and  I  want  her  to  be  like  a  Parisian 
woman." 

Next  day  and  the  following  days,  in  fact,  for  twenty  days 
after,  Rodolphe  spent  all  his  time  at  the  Bergmanns',  watching 
Francesca  without  having  determined  to  watch  her.  In  some 
souls  admiration  is  not  independent  of  a  certain  penetration. 
The  young  Frenchman  discerned  in  Francesca  the  imprudence 
of  girlhood,  the  true  nature  of  a  woman  as  yet  unbroken, 
sometimes  struggling  against  her  love,  and  at  other  moments 
yielding  and  carried  away  by  it.  The  old  man  certainly  be- 
haved to  her  as  a  father  to  his  daughter,  and  Francesca  treated 
him  with  a  deeply  felt  gratitude  which  roused  her  instinctive 
nobleness.  The  situation  and  the  woman  were  to  Rodolphe  an 
impenetrable  enigma,  of  which  the  solution  attracted  him 
more  and  more. 

These  last  days  wore  full  of  secret  joys,  alternating  with 
melancholy  moods,  with  tiffs  and  quarrels  even  more  delight- 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  319 

fid  than  the  hours  when  Kodolphe  and  Francesca  were  of  one 
mind.  And  he  was  more  and  more  fascinated  by  this  tender- 
ness apart  from  wit,  always  and  in  all  things  the  same,  an 
affection  that  was  jealous  of  mere  nothings — already ! 

"You  care  very  much  for  luxury  ?"  said  he  one  evening  to 
Francesca,  who  was  expressing  her  wish  to  get  away  from 
Gersau,  where  she  missed  many  things. 

"I  I"  cried  she.  "I  love  luxury  as  I  love  the  arts,  as  I  love 
a  picture  by  Eaphael,  a  fine  horse,  a  beautiful  day,  or  the 
Bay  of  Naples.  Emilio,"  she  went  on,  "have  I  ever  com- 
plained here  during  our  days  of  privation  ?" 

"You  would  not  have  been  yourself  if  you  had,"  replied  the 
old  man  gravely. 

"After  all,  is  it  not  in  the  nature  of  plain  folks  to  aspire  to 
grandeur  ?"  she  asked,  with  a  mischievous  glance  at  Eodolphe 
and  at  her  husband.  "Were  my  feet  made  for  fatigue?"  she 
added,  putting  out  two  pretty  little  feet.  "My  hands" — and 
she  held  one  out  to  Eodolphe — "were  those  hands  made  to 
work  ? — Leave  us,"  she  said  to  her  husband ;  "I  want  to  speak 
to  him." 

The  old  man  went  into  the  drawing-room  with  sublime  good 
faith ;  he  was  sure  of  his  wife. 

"I  will  not  have  you  come  with  us  to  Geneva,"  she  said  to 
Eodolphe.  "It  is  a  gossiping  town.  Though  I  am  far  above 
the  nonsense  the  world  talks,  I  do  not  choose  to  be  calumniated, 
not  for  my  own  sake,  but  for  his.  I  make  it  my  pride  to  be 
the  glory  of  that  old  man,  who  is,  after  all,  my  only  protector. 
We  are  leaving ;  stay  here  a  few  days.  When  you  come  on  to 
Geneva,  call  first  on  my  husband,  and  let-  him  introduce  you 
to  me.  Let  us  hide  our  great  and  unchangeable  affection 
from  the  eyes  of  the  world.  I  love  you;  you  know  it;  but 
this  is  how  I  will  prove  it  to  you — you  shall  never  discern 
in  my  conduct  anything  whatever  that  may  arouse  your  jeal- 
ousy." 

She  drew  him  into  a  corner  of  the  balcony,  kissed  him  on 
the  forehead,  and  fled,  leaving  him.  in  amazement. 

Next  day  Eodolphe  heard  that  the  lodgers  at  the  Berg- 


320  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

manns'  had  left  at  daybreak.  It  then  seemed  to  him  intoler- 
able to  remain  at  Gersau,  and  he  set  out  for  Vevay  by  the 
longest  route,  starting  sooner  than  was  necessary.  Attracted 
to  the  waters  of  the  lake  where  the  beautiful  Italian  awaited 
him,  he  reached  Geneva  by  the  end  of  October.  To  avoid  the 
discomforts  of  the  town  he  took  rooms  in  a  house  at  Eaux- 
Vives,  outside  the  walls.  As  soon  as  he  was  settled,  his  first 
care  was  to  ask  his  landlord,  a  retired  jeweler,  whether  some 
Italian  refugees  from  Milan  had  not  lately  come  to  reside 
at  Geneva. 

"Not  so  far  as  I  know,"  replied  the  man.  "Prince  and 
Princess  Colonna  of  Eome  have  taken  Monsieur  Jeanrenaud's 
place  for  three  years ;  it  is  one  of  the  finest  on  the  lake.  It 
is  situated  between  the  Villa  Diodati  and  that  of  Monsieur 
Lafin-de-Dieu,  let  to  the  Vicomtesse  de  Beauseant.  Prince 
Colonna  has  come  to  see  his  daughter  and  his  son-in-law 
Prince  Gandolphini,  a  Neapolitan,  or  if  you  like,  a  Sicilian, 
an  old  adherent  of  King  Murat's,  and  a  victim  of  the  last 
revolution.  These  are  the  last  arrivals  at  Geneva,  and  they 
are  not  Milanese.  Serious  steps  had  to  be  taken,  and  the 
Pope's  interest  in  the  Colonna  family  was  invoked,  to  obtain 
permission  from  the  foreign  powers  and  the  King  of  Naples 
for  the  Prince  and  Princess  Gandolphini  to  live  here.  Geneva 
is  anxious  to  do  nothing  to  displease  the  Holy  Alliance  to 
which  it  owes  its  independence.  Our  part  is  not  to  ruffle 
foreign  courts ;  there  are  many  foreigners  here,  Russians  and 
English." 

"Even  some  Gevenese?" 

"Yes,  monsieur,  our  lake  is  so  fine !  Lord  Byron  lived  here 
about  seven  years  at  the  Villa  Diodati,  which  every  one  goes 
to  see  now,  like  Coppet  and  Ferney." 

"You  cannot  tell  me  whether  within  a  week  or  so  a  book- 
seller from  Milan  has  come  with  his  wife — named  Lamporani, 
one  of  the  leaders  of  the  last  revolution  ?" 

"I  could  easily  find  out  by  going  to  the  Foreigners'  Club," 
said  the  jeweler. 

Rodolphe's  first  walk  was  very  naturally  to  the  Villa  Dio- 


ALBERT  SAVARTJS  321 

dati,  the  residence  of  Lord  Byron,  whose  recent  death  added 
to  its  attractiveness:  for  is  not  death  the  consecration  of 
genius  ? 

The  road  to  Eaux-Vives  follows  the  shore  of  the  lake,  and, 
like  all  the  roads  in  Switzerland,  is  very  narrow;  in  some 
spots,  in  consequence  of  the  configuration  of  the  hilly  ground, 
there  is  scarcely  space  for  two  carriages  to  pass  each  other. 

At  a  few  yards  from  the  Jeanrenauds'  house,  which  he  was 
approaching  without  knowing  it,  Eodolphe  heard  the  sound 
of  a  carriage  behind  him,  and,  finding  himself  in  a  sunk  road, 
he  climbed  to  the  top  of  a  rock  to  leave  the  road  free.  Of 
course  he  looked  at  the  approaching  carriage — an  elegant 
English  phaeton,  with  a  splendid  pair  of  English  horses.  He 
felt  quite  dizzy  as  he  beheld  in  this  carriage  Francesca,  beau- 
tifully dressed,  by  the  side  of  an  old  lady  as  hard  as  a  cameo. 
A  servant  blazing  with  gold  lace  stood  behind.  Francesca 
recognized  Eodolphe,  and  smiled  at  seeing  him  like  a  statue 
on  a  pedestal.  The  carriage,  which  the  lover  followed  with 
his  eyes  as  he  climbed  the  hill,  turned  in  at  the  gate  of  a 
country  house,  towards  which  he  ran. 

"Who  lives  here  ?"  he  asked  of  the  gardener. 

"Prince  and  Princess  Colonna,  and  Prince  and  Princess 
Gandolphini." 

"Have  they  not  just  driven  in  ?" 

"Yes,  sir/' 

In  that  instant  a  veil  fell  from  Eodolphe's  eyes;  he  saw 
clearly  the  meaning  of  the  past. 

"If  only  this  is  her  last  piece  of  trickery  I"  thought  the 
thunder-struck  lover  to  himself. 

He  trembled  lest  he  should  have  been  the  plaything  of  a 
whim,  for  he  had  heard  what  a  capriccio  might  mean  in  an 
Italian.  But  what  a  crime  had  he  committed  in  the  eyes 
of  a  woman — in  accepting  a  born  princess  as  a  citizen's  wife ! 
in  believing  that  a  daughter  of  one  of  the  most  illustrious 
houses  of  the  Middle  Ages  was  the  wife  of  a  bookseller ! 
The  consciousness  of  his  blunders  increased  Eodolphe's  desire 
to  know  whether  he  would  be  ignored  and  repelled.  He 


322  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

asked  for  Prince  Gandolphini,  sending  in  his  card,  and  was 
immediately  received  by  the  false  Lamparini,  who  came 
forward  to  meet  him,  welcomed  him  with  the  best  possible 
grace,  and  took  him  to  walk  on  a  terrace  whence  there  was 
a  view  of  Geneva,  the  Jura,  the  hills  covered  with  villas,  and 
below  them  a  wide  expanse  of  the  lake. 

"My  wife  is  faithful  to  the  lakes,  you  see,"  he  remarked, 
after  pointing  out  the  details  to  his  visitor.  "We  have  a 
sort  of  concert  this  evening/'  he  added,  as  they  returned  to 
the  splendid  Villa  Jeanrenaud.  "I  hope  you  will  do  me  and 
the  Princess  the  pleasure  of  seeing  you.  Two  months  of 
poverty  endured  in  intimacy  are  equal  to  years  of  friend- 
ship." 

Though  he  was  consumed  by  curiosity,  Eodolphe  dared  not 
ask  to  see  the  Princess;  he  slowly  made  his  way  back  to 
Eaux-Vives,  looking  forward  to  the  evening.  In  a  few  hours 
his  passion,  great  as  it  had  already  been,  was  augmented  by 
his  anxiety  and  by  suspense  as  to  future  events.  He  now 
understood  the  necessity  for  making  himself  famous,  that 
he  might  some  day  find  himself,  socially  speaking,  on  a 
level  with  his  idol.  In  his  eyes  Francesca  was  made  really 
great  by  the  simplicity  and  ease  of  her  conduct  at  Gersau. 
Princess  Colonna's  haughtiness,  so  evidently  natural  to  her, 
alarmed  Rodolphe,  who  would  find  enemies  in  Francesca's 
father  and  mother — at  least  so  he  might  expect;  and  the 
secrecy  which  Princess  Gandolphini  had  so  strictly  enjoined 
on  him  now  struck  him  as  a  wonderful  proof  of  affection. 
By  not  choosing  to  compromise  the  future,  had  she  not  con- 
fessed that  she  loved  him? 

At  last  nine  o'clock  struck;  Rodolphe  could  get  into  a 
carriage  and  say  with  an  emotion  that  is  very  intelligible, 
"To  the  Villa  Jeanrenaud — to  Prince  Gandolphini's." 

At  last  he  saw  Francesca,  but  without  being  seen  by  her. 
The  Princess  was  standing  quite  near  the  piano.  Her  beauti- 
ful hair,  so  thick  and  long,  was  bound  with  a  golden  fillet.  Her 
face,  in  the  light  of  wax  candles,  had  the  brilliant  pallor 
peculiar  to  Italians,  and  which  looks  its  best  only  by  artificial 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  323 

light.  She  was  in  full  evening  dress,  showing  her  fascinat- 
ing shoulders,  the  figure  of  a  girl  and  the  arms  of  an  antique 
statue.  Her  sublime  beauty  was  beyond  all  possible  rivalry, 
though  there  were  some  charming  English  and  Eussian  ladies 
present,  the  prettiest  women  of  Geneva,  and  other  Italians, 
among  them  the  dazzling  and  illustrious  Princess  Varese, 
and  the  famous  singer  Tinti,  who  was  at  that  moment  sing- 
ing. 

Eodolphe,  leaning  against  the  door-post,  looked  at  the 
Princess,  turning  on  her  the  fixed,  tenacious,  attracting  gaze, 
charged  with  the  full,  insistent  will  which  is  concentrated  in 
the  feeling  called  desire,  and  thus  assumes  the  nature  of  a 
vehement  command.  Did  the  flame  of  that  gaze  reach  Fran- 
cesca?  Was  Francesca  expecting  each  instant  to  see  Eo- 
dolphe  ?  In  a  few  minutes  she  stole  a  glance  at  the  door,  as 
though  magnetized  by  this  current  of  love,  and  her  eyes,  with- 
out reserve,  looked  deep  into  Eodolphe's.  A  slight  thrill  quiv- 
ered through  that  superb  face  and  beautiful  body;  the  shock 
to  her  spirit  reacted :  Francesca  blushed !  Eodolphe  felt  a 
whole  life  in  this  exchange  of  looks,  so  swift  that  it  can  only  be 
compared  to  a  lightning  flash.  But  to  what  could  his  happi- 
ness compare  ?  He  was  loved.  The  lofty  Princess,  in  the  midst 
of  her  world,  in  this  handsome  villa,  kept  the  pledge  given  by 
the  disguised  exile,  the  capricious  beauty  of  Bergmanns'  lodg- 
ings. The  intoxication  of  such  a  moment  enslaves  a  man  for 
life  1  A  faint  smile,  refined  and  subtle,  candid  and  triumph- 
ant, curled  Princess  Gandolphini's  lips,  and  at  a  moment 
when  she  did  not  feel  herself  observed  she  looked  at  Eo- 
dolphe with  an  expression  which  seemed  to  ask  his  pardon  for 
having  deceived  him  as  to  her  rank. 

When  the  song  was  ended  Eodolphe  could  make  his  way  to 
the  Prince,  who  graciously  led  him  to  his  wife.  Eodolphe 
went  through  the  ceremonial  of  a  formal  introduction  to 
Princess  and  Prince  Colonna,  and  to  Francesca.  When  this 
was  over,  the  Princess  had  to  take  part  in  the  famous  quar- 
tette, Mi  manca  la  voce,  which  was  sung  by  her  with  Tinti, 
with  the  famous  tenor  Genovese,  and  with  a  well-known  Ital- 


324  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

ian  Prince  then  in  exile,  whose  voice,  if  he  had  not  heen  a 
Prince,  would  have  made  him  one  of  the  Princes  of  Art. 

"Take  that  seat,"  said  Francesca  to  Kodolphe,  pointing  to 
her  own  chair.  "Oime!  I  think  there  is  some  mistake  in  my 
name ;  I  have  for  the  last  minute  been  Princess  Rodolphini." 

It  was  said  with  an  artless  grace  which  revived,  in  this 
avowal  hidden  beneath  a  jest,  the  happy  days  at  Gersau.  Ko- 
dolphe reveled  in  the  exquisite  sensation  of  listening  to  the 
voice  of  the  woman  he  adored,  while  sitting  so  close  to  her 
that  one  cheek  was  almost  touched  by  the  stuff  of  her  dress 
and  the  gauze  of  her  scarf.  But  when,  at  such  a  moment, 
Mi  manca  la  voce  is  being  sung,  and  by  the  finest  voices  in 
Italy,  it  is  easy  to  understand  what  it  was  that  brought  the 
tears  to  Rodolphe's  eyes. 

In  love,  as  perhaps  in  all  else,  there  are  certain  circum- 
stances, trivial  in  themselves,  but  the  outcome  of  a  thousand 
little  previous  incidents,  of  which  the  importance  is  immense, 
as  an  epitome  of  the  past  and  as  a  link  with  the  future.  A  hun- 
dred times  already  we  have  felt  the  preciousness  of  the  one  we 
love;  but  a  trifle — the  perfect  touch  of  two  souls  united  during 
a  walk  perhaps  by  a  single  word,  by  some  unlooked-for  proof  of 
affection,  will  carry  the  feeling  to  its  supremest  pitch.  In 
short,  to  express  this  truth  by  an  image  which  has  been  pre- 
eminently successful  from  the  earliest  ages  of  the  world,  there 
are  in  a  long  chain  points  of  attachment  needed  where  the 
cohesion  is  stronger  than  in  the  intermediate  loops  of  rings. 
This  recognition  between  Eodolphe  and  Francesca,  at  this 
party,  in  the  face  of  the  world,  was  one  of  those  intense  mo- 
ments which  join  the  future  to  the  past,  and  rivet  a  real 
attachment  more  deeply  in  the  heart.  It  was  perhaps  of  these 
incidental  rivets  that  Bossuet  spoke  when  he  compared  to 
them  the  rarity  of  happy  moments  in  our  lives — he  who  had 
such  a  living  and  secret  experience  of  love. 

Next  to  the  pleasure  of  admiring  the  woman  we  love,  comes 
that  of  seeing  her  admired  by  every  one  else.  Eodolphe  was 
enjoying  both  at  once.  Love  is  a  treasury  of  memories,  and 
though  Rodolphe's  was  already  full,  he  added  to  it  pearls  of 
great  price;  smiles  shed  aside  for  him  alone,  stolen  glances, 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  325 

tones  in  her  singing  which  Francesca  addressed  to  him  alone, 
but  which  made  Tinti  pale  with  jealousy,  they  were  so  much 
applauded.  All  his  strength  of  desire,  the  special  expression 
of  his  soul,  was  thrown  over  the  beautiful  Eoman,  who  became 
unchangeably  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  all  his  thoughts 
and  actions.  Eodolphe  loved  as  every  woman  may  dream  of  be- 
ing loved,  with  a  force,  a  constancy,  a  tenacity,  which  made 
Francesca  the  very  substance  of  his  heart ;  he  felt  her  mingling 
with  his  blood  as  purer  blood,  with  his  soul  as  a  more  perfect 
soul ;  she  would  henceforth  underlie  the  least  efforts  of  his  life 
as  the  golden  sand  of  the  Mediterranean  lies  beneath  the 
waves.  In  short,  Eodolphe's  lightest  aspiration  was  now  a  liv- 
ing hope. 

At  the  end  of  a  few  days,  Francesca  understood  this  bound- 
less love;  but  it  was  so  natural,  and  so  perfectly  shared  by 
her,  that  it  did  not  surprise  her.  She  was  worthy  of  it. 

"What  is  there  that  is  strange?"  said  she  to  Kodolphe,  as 
they  walked  on  the  garden  terrace,  when  he  had  been  betrayed 
into  one  of  those  outbursts  of  conceit  which  come  so  naturally 
to  Frenchmen  in  the  expression  of  their  feelings — "what  is 
extraordinary  in  the  fact  of  your  loving  a  young  and  beautiful 
woman,  artist  enough  to  be  able  to  earn  her  living  like  Tinti, 
and  of  giving  you  some  of  the  pleasures  of  vanity  ?  What  lout 
but  would  then  become  an  Amadis  ?  This  is  not  in  question 
between  you  and  me.  What  is  needed  is  that  we  both  love 
faithfully,  persistently;  at  a  distance  from  each  other  for 
years,  with  no  satisfaction  but  that  of  knowing  that  we  are 
loved/' 

"Alas !"  said  Eodolphe,  "will  you  not  consider  my  fidelity 
as  devoid  of  all  merit  when  you  see  me  absorbed  in  the  efforts 
of  devouring  ambitior  ?  Do  you  imagine  that  I  can  wish  to 
see  you  one  day  exchange  the  fine  name  of  Gandolphini  for 
that  of  a  man  who  is  a  nobody  ?  I  want  to  become  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  men  of  my  country,  to  be  rich,  great — that 
you  may  be  as  proud  of  my  name  as  of  your  own  name  of 
Colonna." 

"I  should  be  grieved  to  see  you  without  such  sentiments  in 

22 


326  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

your  heart/'  she  replied,  with  a  bewitching  smile.  "But  do 
not  wear  yourself  out  too  soon  in  your  ambitious  labors.  Ee- 
main  young.  They  say  that  politics  soon  make  a  man  old." 

One  of  the  rarest  gifts  in  women  is  a  certain  gaiety  which 
does  not  detract  from  tenderness.  This  combination  of  deep 
feeling  with  the  lightness  of  youth  added  an  enchanting  grace 
at  this  moment  to  Francesca's  charms.  This  is  the  key  to  her 
character ;  she  laughs  and  she  is  touched ;  she  becomes  enthusi- 
astic, and  returns  to  arch  raillery  with  a  readiness,  a  facility, 
which  makes  her  the  charming  and  exquisite  creature  she  is, 
and  for  which  her  reputation  is  known  outside  Italy.  Under 
the  graces  of  a  woman  she  conceals  vast  learning,  thanks  to 
the  excessively  monotonous  and  almost  monastic  life  she  led 
in  the  castle  of  the  old  Colonnas. 

This  rich  heiress  was  at  first  intended  for  the  cloister,  being 
the  fourth  child  of  Prince  and  Princess  Colonna;  but  the 
death  of  her  two  brothers,  and  of  her  elder  sister,  suddenly 
brought  her  out  of  her  retirement,  and  made  her  one  of  the 
most  brilliant  matches  in  the  Papal  States.  Her  elder  sister 
had  been  betrothed  to  Prince  Gandolphini,  one  of  the  richest 
landowners  in  Sicily ;  and  Francesca  was  married  to  him  in- 
stead, so  that  nothing  might  be  changed  in  the  position  of  the 
family.  The  Colonnas  and  Gandolphinis  had  always  inter- 
married. 

From  the  age  of  nine  till  she  was  sixteen,  Francesca,  under 
the  direction  of  a  Cardinal  of  the  family,  had  read  all  through 
the  library  of  the  Colonnas,  to  make  weight  against  her  ardent 
imagination  by  studying  science,  art,  and  letters.  But  in 
these  studies  she  acquired  the  taste  for  independence  and  lib- 
eral ideas,  which  threw  her,  with  her  husband,  into  the  ranks 
of  the  revolution.  Rodolphe  had  not  yet  learned  that,  besides 
five  living  languages,  Francesca  knew  Greek,  Latin,  and  He- 
brew. The  charming  creature  perfectly  understood  that,  for 
a  woman,  the  first  condition  of  being  learned  is  to  keep  it 
deeply  hidden. 

Rodolphe  spent  the  whole  winter  at  Geneva.  This  winter 
passed  like  a  day.  When  spring  returned,  notwithstanding 


ALBERT  SAVARTJS  327 

the  infinite  delights  of  the  society  of  a  clever  woman,  wonder- 
fully well  informed,  young  and  lovely,  the  lover  went  through 
cruel  sufferings,  endured  indeed  with  courage,  but  which  were 
sometimes  legible  in  his  countenance,  and  betrayed  themselves 
in  his  manners  or  speech,  perhaps  because  he  believed  that 
Francesca  shared  them.  Now  and  again  it  annoyed  him  to 
admire  her  calmness.  Like  an  Englishwoman,  she  seemed 
to  pride  herself  on  expressing  nothing  in  her  face ;  its  serenity 
defied  love;  he  longed  to  see  her  agitated;  he  accused  her  of 
having  no  feeling,  for  he  believed  in  the  tradition  which 
ascribes  to  Italian  women  a  feverish  excitability. 

"I  am  a  Eoman  I"  Francesca  gravely  replied  one  day  when 
she  took  quite  seriously  some  banter  on  this  subject  from 
Rodolphe. 

There  was  a  depth  of  tone  in  her  reply  which  gave  it  the 
appearance  of  scathing  irony,  and  which  set  Eodolphe's  pulses 
throbbing.  The  month  of  May  spread  before  them  the  treas- 
ures of  her  fresh  verdure ;  the  sun  was  sometimes  as  powerful 
as  at  midsummer.  The  two  lovers  happened  to  be  at  a  part 
of  the  terrace  where  the  rock  arises  abruptly  from  the  lake, 
and  were  leaning  over  the  stone  parapet  that  crowns  the  wall 
above  a  flight  of  steps  leading  down  to  a  landing-stage.  From 
the  neighboring  villa,  where  there  is  a  similar  stairway,  a  boat 
presently  shot  out  like  a  swan,  its  flag  flaming,  its  crimson 
awning  spread  over  a  lovely  woman  comfortably  reclining  on 
red  cushions,  her  hair  wreathed  with  real  flowers;  the  boat- 
man was  a  young  man  dressed  like  a  sailor,  and  rowing  with 
all  the  more  grace  because  he  was  under  the  lady's  eye. 

"They  are  happy!"  exclaimed  Eodolphe,  with  bitter  em- 
phasis. "Claire  de  Bourgogne,  the  last  survivor  of  the  only 

house  which  could  ever  vie  with  the  royal  family  of  France 
)> 

"Oh !  of  a  bastard  branch,  and  that  a  female  line." 

"At  any  rate,  she  is  Vicomtesse  de  Beauseant;  and  she  did 

not " 

"Did  not  hesitate,  you  would  say,  to  bury  herself  here  with 

Monsieur   Gaston   de   Nueil,  you   would  say,"   replied   the 


328  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

daughter  of  the  Colonnas.  "She  is  only  a  Frenchwoman;  I 
am  an  Italian,  my  dear  sir !" 

Francesca  turned  away  from  the  parapet,  leaving  Ro- 
dolphe,  and  went  to  the  further  end  of  the  terrace,  whence 
there  is  a  wide  prospect  of  the  lake.  Watching  her  as  she 
slowly  walked  away,  Rodolphe  suspected  that  he  had  wounded 
her  soul,  at  once  so  simple  and  so  wise,  so  proud  and  so  hum- 
ble. It  turned  him  cold;  he  followed  Francesca,  who  signed 
to  him  to  leave  her  to  herself.  But  he  did  not  heed  the  warn- 
ing, and  detected  her  wiping  away  her  tears.  Tears!  in  so 
strong  a  nature. 

"Francesca,"  said  he,  taking  her  hand,  "is  there  a  single 
regret  in  your  heart  ?" 

She  was  silent,  disengaged  her  hand  which  held  her  em- 
broidered handkerchief,  and  again  dried  her  eyes. 

"Forgive  me !"  he  said.  And  with  a  rush,  he  kissed  her  eyes 
to  wipe  away  the  tears. 

Francesca  did  not  seem  aware  of  his  passionate  impulse, 
she  was  so  violently  agitated.  Rodolphe,  thinking  she  con- 
sented, grew  bolder ;  he  put  his  arm  round  her,  clasped  her  to 
his  heart,  and  snatched  a  kiss.  But  she  freed  herself  by  a 
dignified  movement  of  offended  modesty,  and,  standing  a  yard 
off,  she  looked  at  him  without  anger,  but  with  firm  determi- 
nation. 

"Go  this  evening,"  she  said.  "We  meet  no  more  till  we  meet 
at  Naples." 

The  order  was  stern,  but  it  was  obeyed,  for  it  was  Fran- 
cesca's  will. 

On  his  return  to  Paris  Rodolphe  found  in  his  rooms  a  por- 
trait of  Princess  Gandolphini  painted  by  Schinner,  as  Schin- 
ner  can  paint.  The  artist  had  passed  through  Geneva  on  his 
way  to  Italy.  As  he  had  positively  refused  to  paint  the 
portraits  of  several  women,  Rodolphe  did  not  believe  that  the 
Prince,  anxious  as  he  was  for  a  portrait  of  his  wife,  would  be 
able  to  conquer  the  great  painter's  objections ;  but  Francesca, 
no  doubt,  had  bewitched  him,  and  obtained  from  him — which 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  329 

was  almost  a  miracle — an  original  portrait  for  Eodolphe,  and 
a  duplicate  for  Emilio.  She  told  him  this  in  a  charming 
and  delightful  letter,  in  which  the  mind  indemnified  itself 
for  the  reserve  required  by  the  worship  of  the  proprieties. 
The  lover  replied.  Thus  began,  never  to  cease,  a  regular  cor- 
respondence between  Eodolphe  and  Francesca,  the  only  in- 
dulgence they  allowed  themselves. 

Kodolphe,  possessed  by  an  ambition  sanctified  by  his  love, 
set  to  work.  First  he  longed  to  make  his  fortune,  and  risked 
his  all  in  an  undertaking  to  which  he  devoted  all  his  faculties 
as  well  as  his  capital ;  but  he,  an  inexperienced  youth,  had  to 
contend  against  duplicity,  which  won  the  day.  Thus  three  years 
were  lost  in  a  vast  enterprise,  three  years  of  struggling  and 
courage. 

The  Villele  ministry  fell  just  when  Eodolphe  was  ruined. 
The  valiant  lover  thought  he  would  seek  in  politics  what  com- 
mercial industry  had  refused  him;  but  before  braving  the 
storms  of  this  career,  he  went,  all  wounded  and  sick  at  heart, 
to  have  his  bruises  healed  and  his  courage  revived  at  Naples, 
where  the  Prince  and  Princess  had  been  reinstated  in  their 
place  and  rights  on  the  King's  accession.  This,  in  the  midst 
of  his  warfare,  was  a  respite  full  of  delights;  he  spent  three 
months  at  the  Villa  Gandolphini,  rocked  in  hope. 

Eodolphe  then  began  again  to  construct  his  fortune.  His 
talents  were  already  known ;  he  was  about  to  attain  the  desires 
of  his  ambition ;  a  high  position  was  promised  him  as  the  re- 
ward of  his  zeal,  his  devotion,  and  his  past  services,  when  the 
storm  of  July  1830  broke,  and  again  his  bark  was  swamped. 

She,  and  God !  These  are  the  only  witnesses  of  the  brave 
efforts,  the  daring  attempts  of  a  young  man  gifted  with  fine 
qualities,  but  to  whom,  so  far,  the  protection  of  luck — the  god 
of  fools — has  been  denied.  And  this  indefatigable  wrestler, 
•upheld  by  love,  comes  back  to  fresh  struggles,  lighted  on  his 
way  by  an  always  friendly  eye,  an  ever  faithful  heart. 

Lovers !    Pray  for  him ! 


330  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

As  she  finished  this  narrative,  Mademoiselle  de  Watteville's 
cheeks  were  on  fire;  there  was  a  fever  in  her  blood.  She  was 
crying — but  with  rage.  This  little  novel,  inspired  by  the  lit- 
erary style  then  in  fashion,  was  the  first  reading  of  the  kind 
that  Rosalie  had  ever  had  the  chance  of  devouring.  Love  was 
depicted  in  it,  if  not  by  a  master-hand,  at  any  rate  by  a  man 
who  seemed  to  give  his  own  impressions;  and  truth,  even  if 
unskilled,  could  not  fail  to  touch  a  virgin  soul.  Here  lay  the 
secret  of  Rosalie's  terrible  agitation,  of  her  fever  and  her 
tears;  she  was  jealous  of  Francesca  Colonna. 

She  never  for  an  instant  doubted  the  sincerity  of  this  poetical 
flight;  Albert  had  taken  pleasure  in  telling  the  story  of  his 
passion,  while  changing  the  names  of  persons  and  perhaps  of 
places.  Rosalie  was  possessed  by  infernal  curiosity.  What 
woman  but  would,  like  her,  have  wanted  to  know  her  rival's 
name — for  she  too  loved !  As  she  read  these  pages,  to  her 
really  contagious,  she  had  said  solemnly  to  herself,  "I  love 
him!" — She  loved  Albert,  and  felt  in  her  heart  a  gnawing 
desire  to  fight  for  him,  to  snatch  him  from  this  unknown  rival. 
She  reflected  that  she  knew  nothing  of  music,  and  that  she 
was  not  beautiful. 

"He  will  never  love  me !"  thought  she. 

This  conclusion  aggravated  her  anxiety  to  know  whether 
she  might  not  be  mistaken,  whether  Albert  really  loved  an 
Italian  Princess,  and  was  loved  by  her.  In  the  course  of  this 
fateful  night,  the  power  of  swift  decision,  which  had  charac- 
terized the  famous  Watteville,  was  fully  developed  in  his  de- 
scendant. She  devised  those  whimsical  schemes,  round  which 
hovers  the  imagination  of  most  young  girls  when,  in  the  soli- 
tude to  which  some  injudicious  mothers  confine  them,  they 
are  aroused  by  some  tremendous  event  which  the  system  of 
repression  to  which  they  are  subjected  could  neither  foresee 
nor  prevent.  She  dreamed  of  descending  by  a  ladder  from  the 
kiosk  into  the  garden  of  the  house  occupied  by  Albert ;  of  tak- 
ing advantage  of  the  lawyer's  being  asleep  to  look  through  the 
window  into  his  private  room.  She  thought  of  writing  to  him, 
or  of  bursting  the  fetters  of  Besangon  society  by  introducing 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  331 

Albert  to  the  drawing-room  of  the  Hotel  de  Rupt.  This  en- 
terprise, which  to  the  Abbe  de  Grancey  even  would  have 
seemed  the  climax  of  the  impossible,  was  a  mere  passing 
thought. 

"Ah !"  said  she  to  herself,  "my  father  has  a  dispute  pending 
as  to  his  land  at  les  Rouxey.  1  will  go  there !  If  there  is  no 
lawsuit,  I  will  manage  to  make  one,  and  he  shall  come  into 
our  drawing-room !"  she  cried,  as  she  sprang  out  of  bed  and 
to  the  window  to  look  at  the  fascinating  gleam  which  shone 
through  Albert's  nights.  The  clock  struck  one;  he  was  still 
asleep. 

"I  shall  see  him  when  he  gets  up;  perhaps  he  will  come 
to  his  window." 

At  this  instant  Mademoiselle  de  Watteville  was  witness  to 
an  incident  which  promised  to  place  in  her  power  the  means 
of  knowing  Albert's  secrets.  By  the  light  of  the  moon  she 
saw  a  pair  of  arms  stretched  out  from  the  kiosk  to  help 
Jerome,  Albert's  servant,  to  get  across  the  coping  of  the  wall 
and  step  into  the  little  building.  In  Jerome's  accomplice 
Rosalie  at  once  recognized  Mariette  the  lady's-maid. 

"Mariette  and  Jerome !"  said  she  to  herself.  "Mariette, 
such  an  ugly  girl !  Certainly  they  must  be  ashamed  of  them- 
selves." 

Though  Mariette  was  horribly  ugly  and  six-and-thirty, 
she  had  inherited  several  plots  of  land.  She  had  been  seven- 
teen years  with  Madame  de  Watteville,  who  valued  her  highly 
for  her  bigotry,  her  honesty,  and  long  service,  and  she  had  no 
doubt  saved  money  and  invested  her  wages  and  perquisites. 
Hence,  earning  about  ten  louis  a  year,  she  probably  had  by  this 
time,  including  compound  interest  and  her  little  inheritance, 
not  less  than  ten  thousand  francs. 

In  Jerome's  eyes  ten  thousand  francs  could  alter  the  laws 
of  optics ;  he  saw  in  Mariette  a  neat  figure ;  he  did  not  perceive 
the  pits  and  seams  which  virulent  smallpox  had  left  on  her 
flat,  parched  face;  to  him  the  crooked  mouth  was  straight; 
and  ever  since  Savaron,  by  taking  him  into  his  service,  had 
brought  him  so  near  to  the  Wattevilles'  house,  he  had  laid 


332  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

siege  systematically  to  the  maid,  who  was  as  prim  and  sancti- 
monious as  her  mistress,  and  who,  like  every  ugly  old  maid, 
was  far  more  exacting  than  the  handsomest. 

If  the  night-scene  in  the  kiosk  is  thus  fully  accounted  for 
to  all  perspicacious  readers,  it  was  not  so  to  Rosalie,  though 
she  derived  from  it  the  most  dangerous  lesson  that  can  be 
given,  that  of  a  bad  example.  A  mother  brings  her  daughter 
up  strictly,  keeps  her  under  her  wing  for  seventeen  years,  and 
then,  in  one  hour,  a  servant  girl  destroys  the  long  and  painful 
work,  sometimes  by  a  word,  often  indeed  by  a  gesture !  Ro- 
salie got  into  bed  again,  not  without  considering  how  she 
might  take  advantage  of  her  discovery. 

Next  morning,  as  she  went  to  Mass  accompanied  by  Mari- 
ette — her  mother  was  not  well — Rosalie  took  the  maid's  arm, 
which  surprised  the  country  wench  not  a  little. 

"Mariette,"  said  she,  "is  Jerome  in  his  master's  con- 
fidence ?" 

"I  do  not  know,  mademoiselle." 

"Do  not  play  the  innocent  with  me,"  said  Mademoiselle  de 
Watteville  drily.  "You  let  him  kiss  you  last  night  under  the 
kiosk ;  I  no  longer  wonder  that  you  so  warmly  approved  of  my 
mother's  ideas  for  the  improvements  she  planned." 

Rosalie  could  feel  how  Mariette  was  trembling  by  the  shak- 
ing of  her  arm. 

"I  wish  you  no  ill,"  Rosalie  went  on.  "Be  quite  easy;  I 
shall  not  say  a  word  to  my  mother,  and  you  can  meet  Jerome 
as  often  as  you  please." 

"But,  mademoiselle,"  said  Mariette,  "it  is  perfectly 
respectable;  Jerome  honestly  means  to  marry  me " 

"But  then,"  said  Rosalie,  "why  meet  at  night?" 

Mariette  was  dumfounded,  and  could  make  no  reply. 

"Listen,  Mariette;  I  am  in  love  too!  In  secret  and  with- 
out any  return.  I  am,  after  all,  my  father's  and  mother's 
only  child.  You  have  more  to  hope  for  from  me  than  from 
any  one  else  in  the  world 

"Certainly,  mademoiselle,  and  you  may  count  on  us  for 
life  or  death,"  exclaimed  Mariette,  rejoiced  at  the  unexpected 
turn  of  affairs. 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  333 

"In  the  first  place,  silence  for  silence,"  said  Eosalie.  "I  will 
not  marry  Monsieur  de  Soulas ;  but  one  thing  I  will  have,  and 
must  have;  my  help  and  favor  are  yours  on  one  condition 
only." 

"What  is  that?" 

"I  must  see  the  letters  which  Monsieur  Savaron  sends  to  the 
post  by  Jerome." 

"But  what  for  ?"  said  Mariette  in  alarm. 

"Oh !  merely  to  read  them,  and  you  yourself  shall  post  them 
afterwards.  It  will  cause  a  little  delay ;  that  is  all." 

At  this  moment  they  went  into  church,  and  each  of  them, 
instead  of  reading  the  order  of  Mass,  fell  into  her  own  train 
of  thought. 

"Dear,  dear,  how  many  sins  are  there  in  all  that  ?"  thought 
Mariette. 

Eosalie,  whose  soul,  brain,  and  heart  were  completely  upset 
by  reading  the  story,  by  this  time  regarded  it  as  history, 
written  for  her  rival.  By  dint  of  thinking  of  nothing  else, 
like  a  child,  she  ended  by  believing  that  the  Eastern  Review 
was  no  doubt  forwarded  to  Albert's  lady-love. 

"Oh !"  said  she  to  herself,  her  head  buried  in  her  hands  in 
the  attitude  of  a  person  lost  in  prayer;  "oh!  how  can  I  get 
my  father  to  look  through  the  list  of  people  to  whom  the  Re- 
view is  sent?" 

After  breakfast  she  took  a  turn  in  the  garden  with  her 
father,  coaxing  and  cajoling  him,  and  brought  him  to  the 
kiosk. 

"Do  you  suppose,  my  dear  little  papa,  that  our  Review  is 
ever  read  abroad  ?" 

"It  is  but  just  started " 

"Well,  I  will  wager  that  it  is." 

"It  is  hardly  possible." 

"Just  go  and  find  out,  and  note  the  names  of  any  sub- 
scribers out  of  France." 

Two  hours  later  Monsieur  de  Watteville  said  to  his 
daughter : 

"I  was  right;  there  is  not  one  foreign  subscriber  as  yet. 


334  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

They  hope  to  get  some  at  Neuf  chatel,  at  Berne,  and  at  Geneva, 
One  copy,  is  in  fact,  sent  to  Italy,  but  it  is  not  paid  for — to  a 
Milanese  lady  at  her  country  house  at  Belgirate,  on  Lago 
Maggiore. 

"What  is  her  name?" 

"The  Duchesse  d'Argaiolo." 

"Do  you  know  her,  papa  ?" 

"I  have  heard  about  her.  She  was  by  birth  a  Princess 
Soderini,  a  Florentine,  a  very  great  lady,  and  quite  as  rich 
as  her  husband,  who  has  one  of  the  largest  fortunes  in  Lom- 
bardy.  Their  villa  on  the  Lago  Maggiore  is  one  of  the  sights 
of  Italy." 

Two  days  after,  Mariette  placed  the  following  letter  in 
Mademoiselle  de  Watteville's  hand: — 

Albert  Savaron  to  Leopold  Hannequin. 

"Yes,  'tis  so,  my  dear  friend ;  I  am  at  Besangon,  while  you 
thought  I  was  traveling.  I  would  not  tell  you  anything  till 
success  should  begin,  and  now  it  is  dawning.  Yes,  my  dear 
Leopold,  after  so  many  abortive  undertakings,  over  which  I 
have  shed  the  best  of  my  blood,  have  wasted  so  many  efforts, 
spent  so  much  courage,  I  have  made  up  my  mind  to  do  as 
you  have  done — to  start  on  a  beaten  path,  on  the  highroad, 
as  the  longest  but  the  safest.  I  can  see  you  jump  with  sur- 
prise in  your  lawyer's  chair ! 

"But  do  not  suppose  that  anything  is  changed  in  my  per- 
sonal life,  of  which  you  alone  in  the  world  know  the  secret, 
and  that  under  the  reservations  she  insists  on.  I  did  not 
tell  you,  my  friend;  but  I  was  horribly  weary  of  Paris.  The 
outcome  of  the  first  enterprise,  on  which  I  had  founded  all 
my  hopes,  and  which  came  to  a  bad  end  in  consequence  of  the 
utter  rascality  of  my  two  partners,  who  combined  to  cheat 
and  fleece  me — me,  though  everything  was  done  by  my  energy 
— made  me  give  up  the  pursuit  of  a  fortune  after  the  loss  of 
three  years  of  my  life.  One  of  these  years  was  spent  in  the 
law  courts,  and  perhaps  I  should  have  come  worse  out  of  the 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  335 

scrape  if  I  had  not  been  made  to  study  law  when  I  was  twenty. 

"I  made  up  my  mind  to  go  into  politics  solely,  to  the  end 
that  I  may  some  day  find  my  name  in  a  list  for  promotion  to 
the  Senate  under  the  title  of  Comte  Albert  Savaron  de  Sa- 
varus,  and  so  revive  in  France  a  good  name  now  extinct  in 
Belgium — though  indeed  I  am  neither  legitimate  nor  legiti- 
mized." 

"Ah!  I  knew  it!  He  is  of  noble  birth!"  exclaimed 
Rosalie,  dropping  the  letter. 

"You  know  how  conscientiously  I  studied,  how  faithful  and 
useful  I  was  as  an  obscure  journalist,  and  how  excellent  a 
secretary  to  the  statesman  who,  on  his  part,  was  true  to  me  in 
1829.  Flung  to  the  depths  once  more  by  the  revolution  of 
July  just  when  my  name  was  becoming  known,  at  the  very 
moment  when,  as  Master  of  Appeals,  I  was  about  to  find  my 
place  as  a  necessary  wheel  in  the  political  machine,  I  com- 
mitted the  blunder  of  remaining  faithful  to  the  fallen,  and 
fighting  for  them,  without  them.  Oh !  why  was  I  but  three- 
and-thirty,  and  why  did  I  not  apply  to  you  to  make  me 
eligible?  I  concealed  from  you  all  my  devotedness  and  my 
dangers.  What  would  you  have?  I  was  full  of  faith.  We 
should  not  have  agreed. 

"Ten  months  ago,  when  you  saw  me  so  gay  and  contented, 
writing  my  political  articles,  I  was  in  despair;  I  foresaw 
my  fate,  at  the  age  of  thirty-seven,  with  two  thousand  francs 
for  my  whole  fortune,  without  the  smallest  fame,  just  having 
failed  in  a  noble  undertaking,  the  founding,  namely,  of  a 
daily  paper  answering  only  to  a  need  of  the  future  instead 
of  appealing  to  the  passions  of  the  moment.  I  did  not  know 
which  way  to  turn,  and  I  felt  my  own  value !  I  wandered 
about,  gloomy  and  hurt,  through  the  lonely  places  of  Paris — 
Paris  which  had  slipped  through  my  fingers — thinking  of 
my  crushed  ambitions,  but  never  giving  them  up.  Oh,  what 
frantic  letters  I  wrote  at  that  time  to  her,  my  second  con- 
science, my  other  self!  Sometimes  I  would  say  to  myself, 
'Why  did  I  sketch  so  vast  a  programme  of  life?  Why  de- 
mand everything?  Why  not  wait  for  happiness  while  devot- 
ing myself  to  some  mechanical  employment.' 


336  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

"I  then  looked  about  me  for  some  modest  appointment  by 
which  I  might  live.  I  was  about  to  get  the  editorship  of  a 
paper  under  a  manager  who  did  not  know  much  about  it,  a 
man  of  wealth  and  ambition,  when  I  took  fright.  'Would 
she  ever  accept  as  her  husband  a  man  who  had  stooped  so 
low?'  I  wondered. 

"This  reflection  made  me  two-and-twenty  again.  But,  oh, 
my  dear  Leopold,  how  the  soul  is  worn  by  these  perplexities ! 
What  must  not  caged  eagles  suffer,  and  imprisoned  lions ! — 
They  suffer  what  Napoleon  suffered,  not  at  Saint  Helena, 
but  on  the  Quay  of  the  Tuileries,  on  the  10th  of  August,  when 
he  saw  Louis  XVI.  defending  himself  so  badly  while  he  could 
have  quelled  the  insurrection ;  as  he  actually  did,  on  the  same 
spot,  a  little  later,  in  Vendemiaire.  Well,  my  life  has  been  a 
torment  of  that  kind,  extending  over  four  years.  How  many 
a  speech  to  the  Chamber  have  I  not  delivered  in  the  deserted 
alleys  of  the  Bois  de  Boulogne!  These  wasted  harangues 
have  at  any  rate  sharpened  my  tongue  and  accustomed  my 
mind  to  formulate  its  ideas  in  words.  And  while  I  was  un- 
dergoing this  secret  torture,  you  were  getting  married,  you 
had  paid  for  your  business,  you  were  made  law-clerk  to  the 
Maire  of  your  district,  after  gaining  the  cross  for  a  wound 
at  Saint-Merri. 

"Now,  listen.  When  I  was  a  small  boy  and  tortured  cock- 
chafers, the  poor  insects  had  one  form  of  struggle  which  used 
almost  to  put  me  in  a  fever.  It  was  when  I  saw  them  making 
repeated  efforts  to  fly  but  without  getting  away,  though  they 
could  spread  their  wings.  We  used  to  say,  'They  are  mark- 
ing time.'  Now,  was  this  sympathy  ?  Was  it  a  vision  of  my 
own  future  ? — Oh !  to  spread  my  wings  and  yet  be  unable  to 
fly !  That  has  been  my  predicament  since  that  fine  under- 
taking by  which  I  was  disgusted,  but  which  has  now  made  four 
families  rich. 

"At  last,  seven  months  ago,  I  determined  to  make  myself 
a  name  at  the  Paris  Bar,  seeing  how  many  vacancies  had  been 
left  by  the  promotion  of  several  lawyers  to  eminent  positions. 
But  when  I  remembered  the  rivalry  I  had  seen  among  men 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  337 

of  the  press,  and  how  difficult  it  is  to  achieve  anything  of 
any  kind  in  Paris,  the  arena  where  so  many  champions  meet, 
I  came  to  a  determination  painful  to  myself,  but  certain  in 
its  results,  and  perhaps  quicker  than  any  other.  In  the  course 
of  our  conversations  you  had  given  me  a  picture  of  the  society 
of  Besangon,  of  the  impossibility  for  a  stranger  to  get  on  there, 
to  produce  the  smallest  effect,  to  get  into  society,  or  to  succeed 
in  any  way  whatever.  It  was  there  that  I  determined  to  set 
up  my  flag,  thinking,  and  rightly,  that  I  should  meet  with 
no  opposition,  but  find  myself  alone  to  canvass  for  the  election. 
The  people  of  the  Comte  will  not  meet  the  outsider?  The 
outsider  will  not  meet  them !  They  refuse  to  admit  him  to 
their  drawing-rooms,  he  will  never  go  there !  He  never 
shows  himsalf  anywhere,  not  even  in  the  streets !  But  there 
is  one  class  that  elects  the  deputies — the  commercial  class.  I 
am  going  especially  to  study  commercial  questions,  with  which 
I  am  already  familiar ;  I  will  gain  their  lawsuits,  I  will  effect 
compromises,  I  will  be  the  greatest  pleader  in  Besangon.  By 
and  by  I  will  start  a  Review,  in  which  I  will  defend  the 
interests  of  the  country,  will  create  them,  or  preserve  them,  or 
resuscitate  them.  When  I  sliall  have  won  a  sufficient  number 
of  votes,  my  name  will  come  out  of  the  urn.  For  a  long  time 
the  unknown  barrister  will  be  treated  with  contempt,  but  some 
circumstance  will  arise  to  bring  him  to  the  front — some  un- 
paid defence,  or  a  case  which  no  other  pleader  will  under- 
take. 

"Well,  my  dear  Leopold,  I  packed  up  my  books  in  eleven 
cases,  I  bought  such  law-books  as  might  prove  useful,  and  I 
sent  everything  off,  furniture  and  all,  by  carrier  to  Besangon. 
I  collected  my  diplomas,  and  I  went  to  bid  you  good-bye.  The 
mail  coach  dropped  me  at  Besangon,  where,  in  three  days' 
time,  I  chose  a  little  set  of  rooms  looking  out  over  some 
gardens.  I  sumptuously  arranged  the  .mysterious  private 
room  where  I  spend  my  nights  and  days,  and  where  the  por- 
trait of  my  divinity  reigns — of  her  to  whom  my  life  is  dedi- 
cate, who  fills  it  wholly,  who  is  the  mainspring  of  my  efforts, 
the  secret  of  my  courage,  the  cause  of  my  talents.  Then,  as 


338  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

soon  as  the  furniture  and  books  had  come,  I  engaged  an  in- 
telligent man-servant,  and  there  I  sat  for  five  months  like  a 
hibernating  marmot. 

"My  name  had,  however,  been  entered  on  the  list  of  lawyers 
in  the  town.  At  last  I  was  called  one  day  to  defend  an  un- 
happy wretch  at  the  Assizes,  no  doubt  in  order  to  hear  me 
speak  for  once !  One  of  the  most  influential  merchants  of 
Besangon  was  on  the  jury ;  he  had  a  difficult  task  to  fulfil ;  I 
did  my  utmost  for  the  man,  and  my  success  was  absolute  and 
complete.  My  client  was  innocent;  I  very  dramatically  se- 
! cured  the  arrest  of  the  real  criminals,  who  had  come  forward 
as  witnesses.  In  short,  the  Court  and  the  public  were  united 
in  their  admiration.  I  managed  to  save  the  examining  magis- 
trate's pride  by  pointing  .out  the  impossibility  of  detecting 
a  plot  so  skilfully  planned. 

"Then  I  had  to  fight  a  case  for  my  merchant,  and  won  his 
suit.  The  Cathedral  Chapter  next  chose  me  to  defend  a 
tremendous  action  against  the  town,  which  had  been  going 
on  for  four  years;  I  won  that.  Thus,  after  three  trials,  I 
had  become  the  most  famous  advocate  of  Franche-Comte. 

"But  I  bury  my  life  in  the  deepest  mystery,  and  so  hide  my 
aims.  I  have  adopted  habits  which  prevent  my  accepting 
any  invitations.  I  am  only  to  be  consulted  between  six  and 
eight  in  the  morning ;  I  go  to  bed  after  my  dinner,  and  work  at 
night.  The  Vicar-General,  a  man  of  parts,  and  very  in- 
fluential, who  placed  the  Chapter's  case  in  my  hands  after  they 
had  lost  it  in  the  lower  Court,  of  course  professed  their 
gratitude.  'Monsieur,'  said  I,  'I  will  win  your  suit,  but  I 
want  no  fee;  I  want  more'  (start  of  alarm  on  the  Abbe's 
part).  'You  must  know  that  I  am  a  great  loser  by  putting 
myself  forward  in  antagonism  to  the  town.  I  came  here 
only  to  leave  the  place  as  deputy.  I  mean  to  engage  only 
in  commercial  cases,  .because  commercial  men  return  the  mem- 
bers; they  will  distrust  me  if  I  defend  "the  priests" — for  to 
them  you  are  simply  the  priests.  If  I  undertake  your  de- 
fence, it  is  because  I  was,  in  1828,  private  secretary  to  such 
a  Minister'  (again  a  start  of  surprise  on  the  part  of  my 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  389 

Abbe),  'and  Master  of  Appeals,  under  the  name  of  Albert 
de  Savarus'  (another  start).  'I  have  remained  faithful 
to  monarchical  opinions;  but,  as  you  have  not  the  majority 
of  votes  in  Besangon,  I  must  gain  votes  among  the  citizens. 
So  the  fee  I  ask  of  you  is  the  votes  you  may  be  able  secretly 
to  secure  for  me  at  the  opportune  moment.  Let  us  each  keep 
our  own  counsel,  and  I  will  defend,  for  nothing,  every  case 
to  which  a  priest  of  this  diocese  may  be  a  party.  Not  a 
word  about  my  previous  life,  and  we  will  be  true  to  each 
other.' 

"When  he  came  to  thank  me  afterwards,  he  gave  me  a  note 
for  five  hundred  francs,  and  said  in  my  ear,  'The  votes  are 
a  bargain  all  the  same/ — I  have  in  the  course  of  five  inter- 
views made  a  friend,  I  think,  of  this  Vicar-General. 

"Now  I  am  overwhelmed  with  business,  and  I  undertake 
no  cases  but  those  brought  me  by  merchants,  saying  that 
commercial  questions  are  my  specialty.  This  line  of  conduct 
attaches  business  men  to  me,  and  allows  me  to  make  friends 
with  influential  persons.  So  all  goes  well.  Within  a  few 
months  I  shall  have  found  a  house  to  purchase  in  Besangon, 
so  as  to  secure  a  qualification.  I  count  on  your  lending  me 
the  necessary  capital  for  this  investment.  If  I  should  die, 
if  I  should  fail,  the  loss  would  be  too  small  to  be  any  con- 
sideration between  you  and  me.  You  will  get  the  interest 
out  of  the  rental,  and  I  shall  take  good  care  to  look  out  for 
something  cheap,  so  that  you  may  lose  nothing  by  this  mort- 
gage, which  is  indispensable. 

"Oh!  my  dear  Leopold,  no  gambler  with  the  last  remains 
of  his  fortune  in  his  pocket,  bent  on  staking  it  at  the  Cercle 
des  Strangers  for  the  last  time  one  night,  when  he  must  come 
away  rich  or  ruined,  ever  felt  such  a  perpetual  ringing  in  his 
ears,  such  a  nervous  moisture  on  his  palms,  such  a  fevered 
tumult  in  his  brain,  such  inward  qualms  in  his  body  as  I  go 
through  every  day  now  that  I  am  playing  my  last  card  in 
the  game  of  ambition.  Alas!  my  dear  and  only  friend,  for 
nearly  ten  years  now  have  I  been  struggling.  This  battle 
with  men  and  things,  in  which  I  have  unceasingly  poured 


340  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

out  my  strength  and  energy,  and  so  constantly  worn  the 
springs  of  desire,  has,  so  to  speak,  undermined  my  vitality. 
With  all  the  appearance  of  a  strong  man  of  good  health,  I 
feel  myself  a  wreck.  Every  day  carries  with  it  a  shred  of 
my  inmost  life.  At  every  fresh  effort  I  feel  that  I  should 
never  be  able  to  begin  again.  I  have  no  power,  no  vigor 
left  but  for  happiness ;  and  if  it  should  never  come  to  crown 
my  head  with  roses,  the  me  that  is  really  me  would  cease  to 
exist,  I  should  be  a  ruined  thing.  I  should  wish  for  nothing 
more  in  the  world.  I  should  want  to  cease  from  living.  You 
know  that  power  and  fame,  the  vast  moral  empire  that  I 
crave,  is  but  secondary ;  it  is  to  me  only  a  means  to  happiness, 
the  pedestal  for  my  idol. 

"To  reach  the  goal  and  die,  like  the  runner  of  antiquity ! 
To  see  fortune  and  death  stand  on  the  threshold  hand  in  hand  ! 
To  win  the  beloved  woman  just  when  love  is  extinct !  To 
lose  the  faculty  of  enjoyment  after  earning  the  right  to  be 
happy  ! — Of  how  many  men  has  this  been  the  fate ! 

"But  there  surely  is  a  moment  when  Tantalus  rebels, 
crosses  his  arms,  and  defies  hell,  throwing  up  his  part  of  the 
eternal  dupe.  That  is  what  I  shall  come  to  if  anything  should 
thwart  my  plan;  if,  after  stooping  to  the  dust  of  provincial 
life,  prowling  like  a  starving  tiger  round  these  tradesmen, 
these  electors,  to  secure  their  votes;  if,  after  wrangling  in 
these  squalid  cases,  and  giving  them  my  time — the  time  I 
might  have  spent  on  Lago  Maggiore,  seeing  the  waters  she 
sees,  basking  in  her  gaze,  hearing  her  voice — if,  after  all,  I 
failed  to  scale  the  tribune  and  conquer  the  glory  that  should 
surround  the  name  that  is  to  succeed  to  that  of  Argaiolo ! 
Nay,  more  than  this,  Leopold;  there  are  days  when  I  feel  a 
heady  languor;  deep  disgust  surges  up  from  the  depths  of 
my  soul,  especially  when,  abandoned  to  long  day-dreams,  I 
have  lost  myself  in  anticipation  of  the  joys  of  blissful  love ! 
May  it  not  be  that  our  desire  has  only  a  certain  modicum  of 
power,  and  that  it  perishes,  perhaps,  of  a  too  lavish  effusion 
of  its  essence  ?  For,  after  all,  at  this  present,  my  life  is  fair, 
illuminated  by  faith,  work,  and  love. 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  341 

"Farewell,  my  friend ;  I  send  love  to  your  children,  and  beg 
you  to  remember  me  to  your  excellent  wife. — Yours, 

"ALBERT." 

Kosalie  read  this  letter  twice  through,  and  its  general  pur- 
port was  stamped  on  her  heart.  She  suddenly  saw  the  whole 
of  Albert's  previous  existence,  for  her  quick  intelligence 
threw  light  on  all  the  details,  and  enabled  her  to  take  it  all 
in.  By  adding  this  information  to  the  little  novel  published 
in  the  Review,  she  now  fully  understood  Albert.  Of  course, 
she  exaggerated  the  greatness,  remarkable  as  it  was,  of  this 
lofty  soul  and  potent  will,  and  her  love  for  Albert  thence- 
forth became  a  passion,  its  violence  enhanced  by  all  the 
strength  of  her  youth,  the  weariness  of  her  solitude,  and  the 
unspent  energy  of  her  character.  Love  is  in  a  young  girl  the 
effect  of  a  natural  law ;  but  when  her  craving  for  affection  is 
centered  in  an  exceptional  man,  it  is  mingled  with  the  en- 
thusiasm which  overflows  in  a  youthful  heart.  Thus  Made- 
moiselle de  Watteville  had  in  a  few  days  reached  a  morbid 
and  very  dangerous  stage  of  enamored  infatuation.  The 
Baroness  was  much  pleased  with  her  daughter,  who,  being 
under  the  spell  of  her  absorbing  thoughts,  never  resisted  her 
will,  seemed  to  be  devoted  to  feminine  occupations,  and 
realized  her  mother's  ideal  of  a  docile  daughter. 

The  lawyer  was  now  engaged  in  Court  two  or  three  times  a 
week.  Though  he  was  overwhelmed  with  business,  he  found 
time  to  attend  the  trials,  call  on  the  litigious  merchants,  and 
conduct  the  Review;  keeping  up  his  personal  mystery,  from 
the  conviction  that  the  more  covert  and  hidden  was  his  in- 
fluence, the  more  real  it  would  be.  But  he  neglected  no 
means  of  success,  reading  up  the  list  of  electors  of  Besangon, 
and  finding  out  their  interests,  their  characters,  their  various 
friendships  and  antipathies.  Did  ever  a  Cardinal  hoping 
to  be  made  Pope  give  himself  more  trouble  ? 

One  evening-  Mariette,  on  coming  to  dress  Eosalie  for  an 
evening  party,  handed  to  her,  not  without  many  groans  over 
this  treachery,  a  letter  of  which  the  address  made  Made- 


342  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

moiselle  de  Watteville  shiver  and  redden  and  turn  pale  again 
as  she  read  the  address : 

To  Madame  la  Duchesse  d'Argaiolo 

(nee  Princesse  Soderini) 

At  Belgirate, 

Lago  Maggiore,          Italy. 

In  her  eyes  this  direction  blazed  as  the  words  Mene,  Tekel, 
Upharsin,  did  in  the  eyes  of  Belshazzar.  After  concealing 
the  letter,  Eosalie  wen};  downstairs  to  accompany  her  mother 
to  Madame  de  Chavoncourt's ;  and  as  long  as  the  endless  even- 
ing lasted,  she  was  tormented  by  remorse  and  scruples.  She 
had  already  felt  shame  at  having  violated  the  secrecy  of 
Albert's  letter  to  Leopold;  she  had  several  times  asked  her- 
self whether,  if  he  knew  of  her  crime,  infamous  inasmuch 
as  it  necessarily  goes  unpunished,  the  high-minded  Albert 
could  esteem  her.  Her  conscience  answered  an  uncompromis- 
ing "No." 

She  had  expiated  her  sin  by  self-imposed  penances;  she 
fasted,  she  mortified  herself  by  remaining  on  her  knees,  her 
arms  outstretched  for  hours,  and  repeating  prayers  all  the 
time.  She  had  compelled  Mariette  to  similar  acts  of  re- 
pentance; her  passion  was  mingled  with  genuine  asceticism, 
and  was  all  the  more  dangerous. 

"Shall  I  read  that  letter,  shall  I  not?"  she  asked  herself, 
while  listening  to  the  Chavoncourt  girls.  One  was  sixteen, 
the  other  seventeen  and  a  half.  Eosalie  looked  upon  her 
two  friends  as  mere  children  because  they  were  not  secretly 
in  love. — "If  I  read  it,"  she  finally  decided,  after  hesitating 
for  an  hour  between  Yes  and  No,  "it  shall,  at  any  rate,  be  the 
last.  Since  I  have  gone  so  far  as  to  see  what  he  wrote  to  his 
friend,  why  should  I  not  know  what  he  says  to  her?  If  it 
is  a  horrible  crime,  is  it  not  a  proof  of  love?  Oh,  Albert! 
am  I  not  your  wife  ?" 

When  Rosalie  was  in  bed  she  opened  the  letter,  dated  from 
day  to  day,  so  as  to  give  the  Duchess  a  faithful  picture  of 
Albert's  life  and  feelings. 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  343 

"35th. 

"My  dear  Soul,  all  is  well.  To  my  other  conquests  I  have 
just  added  an  invaluable  one:  I  have  done  a  service  to  one 
of  the  most  influential  men  who  work  the  elections.  Like 
the  critics,  who  make  other  men's  reputations  but  can  never 
make  their  own,  he  makes  deputies  though  he  never  can  be- 
come one.  The  worthy  man  wanted  to  show  his  gratitude 
without  loosening  his  purse-strings  by  saying  to  me,  'Would 
you  care  to  sit  in  the  Chamber?  I  can  get  you  returned  as 
deputy/ 

"  'If  I  ever  made  up  my  mind  to  enter  on  a  political  career/' 
replied  I  hypocritically,  'it  would  be  to  devote  myself  to  the 
Comte,  which  I  love,  and  where  I  am  appreciated.' 

"  'Well,'  he  said,  'we  will  persuade  you,  and  through 
you  we  shall  have  weight  in  the  Chamber,  for  you  will  dis- 
tinguish yourself  there.' 

"And  so,  my  beloved  angel,  say  what  you  will,  my  per- 
severance will  be  rewarded.  Ere  long  I  shall,  from  the  high 
place  of  the  French  Tribune,  come  before  my  country,  before 
Europe.  My  name  will  be  flung  to  you  by  the  hundred  voices 
of  the  French  press. 

"Yes,  as  you  tell  me,  I  was  old  when  I  came  to  Besangon, 
and  Besano,on  has  aged  me  more ;  but,  like  Sixtus  V.,  I  shall 
be  young  again  the  day  after  my  election.  I  shall  enter  on 
my  true  life,  my  own  sphere.  Shall  we  not  then  stand  in 
the  same  line?  Count  Savaron  de  Savarus,  Ambassador  I 
know  not  where,  may  surely  marry  a  Princess  Soderini,  the 
widow  of  the  Due  d'Argaiolo !  Triumph  restores  the  youth 
of  men  who  have  been  preserved  by  incessant  struggles.  Oh, 
my  Life !  with  what  gladness  did  I  fly  from  my  library  to  my 
private  room,  to  tell  your  portrait  of  this  progress  before 
writing  to  you !  Yes,  the  votes  I  can  command,  those  of 
the  Vicar-General,  of  the  persons  I  can  oblige,  and  of  this 
client,  make  my  election  already  sure. 

"26th. 

"We  have  entered  on  the  twelfth  year  since  that  blest  even- 
ing when,  by  a  look,  the  beautiful  Duchess  sealed  the  promises 


344  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

made  by  the  exile  Francesca.  You,  dear,  are  thirty-two,  I 
am  thirty-five;  the  dear  Duke  is  seventy-seven — that  is  to 
say,  ten  years  more  than  yours  and  mine  put  together,  and 
he  still  keeps  well !  My  patience  is  almost  as  great  as  my 
love,  and  indeed  I  need  a  few  years  yet  to  rise  to  the  level  of 
your  name.  As  you  see,  I  am  in  good  spirits  to-day,  I  can 
laugh ;  that  is  the  effect  of  hope.  Sadness  or  gladness,  it  all 
comes  to  me  through  you.  The  hope  of  success  always  carries 
me  back  to  the  day  following  that  on  which  I  saw  you  for  the 
first  time,  when  my  life  became  one  with  yours  as  the  earth 
turns  to  the  light.  Qual  pianto  are  these  eleven  years,  for 
this  is  the  26th  of  December,  the  anniversary  of  my  arrival 
at  your  villa  on  the  Lake  of  Geneva.  For  eleven  years  have 
I  been  crying  to  you,  while  you  shine  like  a  star  set  too  high 
for  man  to  reach  it. 

"27th. 

"No,  dearest,  do  not  go  to  Milan ;  stay  at  Belgirate.  Milan 
terrifies  me.  I  do  not  like  that  odious  Milanese  fashion  of 
chatting  at  the  Scala  every  evening  with  a  dozen  persons, 
among  whom  it  is  hard  if  no  one  says  something  sweet.  To 
me  solitude  is  like  the  lump  of  amber  in  whose  heart  an  insect 
lives  for  ever  in  unchanging  beauty.  Thus  the  heart  and  soul 
of  a  woman  remain  pure  and  unaltered  in  the  form  of  their 
first  youth.  Is  it  the  Tedeschi  that  you  regret? 

"28th. 

"Is  your  statue  never  to  be  finished  ?  I  should  wish  to  have 
you  in  marble,  in  painting,  in  miniature,  in  every  possible 
form,  to  beguile  my  impatience.  I  still  am  waiting  for  the 
view  of  Belgirate  from  the  south,  and  that  of  the  balcony; 
these  are  all  that  I  now  lack.  I  am  so  extremely  busy  that 
to-day  I  can  only  write  you  nothing — but  that  nothing  is 
everything.  Was  it  not  of  nothing  that  God  made  the  world  ? 
That  nothing  is  a  word,  God's  word :  I  love  you ! 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  345 

"80th. 

"Ah!  I  have  received  your  journal.  Thanks  for  your 
punctuality. — So  you  found  great  pleasure  in  seeing  all  the 
details  of  our  first  acquaintance  thus  set  down  ?  Alas !  even 
while  disguising  them  I  was  sorely  afraid  of  offending  you. 
We  had  no  stories,  and  a  Review  without  stories  is  a  beauty 
without  hair.  Not  being  inventive  by  nature,  and  in  sheer 
despair,  I  took  the  only  poetry  in  my  soul,  the  only  adventure 
in  my  memory,  and  pitched  it  in  the  key  in  which  it  would 
bear  telling ;  nor  did  I  ever  cease  to  think  of  you  while  writing 
the  only  literary  production  that  will  ever  come  from  my 
heart,  I  cannot  say  from  my  pen.  Did  not  the  transforma- 
tion of  your  fierce  Sormano  into  Gina  make  you  laugh  ? 

"You  ask  after  my  health.  Well,  it  is  better  than  in  Paris. 
Though  I  work  enormously,  the  peacefulness  of  the  surround- 
ings has  its  effect  on  the  mind.  What  really  tries  and  ages 
me,  dear  angel,  is  the  anguish  of  mortified  vanity,  the  per- 
petual friction  of  Paris  life,  the  struggle  of  rival  ambitions. 
This  peace  is  a  balm. 

"If  you  could  imagine  the  pleasure  your  letter  gives  me ! 
— the  long,  kind  letter  in  which  you  tell  me  the  most  trivial 
incidents  of  your  life.  No !  you  women  can  never  know  to 
what  a  degree  a  true  lover  is  interested  in  these  trifles.  It 
was  an  immense  pleasure  to  see  the  pattern  of  your  new  dress. 
Can  it  be  a  matter  of  indifference  to  me  to  know  what  you 
wear?  If  yotfr  lofty  brow  is  knit?  If  our  writers  amuse 
you?  If  Canalis'  songs  delight  you?  I  read  the  books  you 
read.  Even  to  your  boating  on  the  lake  every  incident 
touched  me.  Your  letter  is  as  lovely,  as  sweet  as  your  soul ! 
Oh !  flower  of  heaven,  perpetually  adored,  could  I  have  lived 
without  those  dear  letters,  which  for  eleven  years  have  upheld 
me  in  my  difficult  path  like  a  light,  like  a  perfume,  like  a 
steady  chant,  like  some  divine  nourishment,  like  everything 
which  can  soothe  and  comfort  life. 

"Do  not  fail  me !  If  you  knew  what  anxiety  I  suffer  the 
day  before  they  are  due,  or  the  pain  a  day's  delay  can  give  me ! 
Is  she  ill?  Is  he?  I  am  midway  between  hell  and  paradise. 


346  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

"0  mia  cara  diva,  keep  up  your  music,  exercise  your  voice, 
practise.  I  am  enchanted  with  the  coincidence  of  employ- 
ments and  hours  by  which,  though  separated  by  the  Alps,  we 
live  by  precisely  the  same  rule.  The  thought  charms  me  and 
gives  me  courage.  The  first  time  I  undertook  to  plead  here 
*-I  forget  to  tell  you  this — I  fancied  that  you  were  listening 
to  me,  and  I  suddenly  felt  the  flash  of  inspiration  which  lifts 
the  poet  above  mankind.  If  I  am  returned  to  the  Chamber 
— oh !  you  must  come  to  Paris  to  be  present  at  my  first  ap- 
pearance there ! 

"30th,  Evening. 

"Good  heavens,  how  I  love  you !  Alas !  I  have  intrusted 
too  much  to  my  love  and  my  hopes.  An  accident  which 
should  sink  that  overloaded  bark  would  end  my  life.  For  three 
years  now  I  have  not  seen  you,  and  at  the  thought  of  going 
to  Belgirate  my  heart  beats  so  wildly  that  I  am  forced  to  stop. 
— To  see  you,  to  hear  that  girlish  caressing  voice !  To  em- 
brace in  my  gaze  that  ivory  skin,  glistening  under  the  candle- 
light, and  through  which  I  can  read  your  noble  mind!  To 
admire  your  fingers  playing  on  the  keys,  to  drink  in  your 
whole  soul  in  a  look,  in  the  tone  of  an  Oime  or  an  Alberto! 
To  walk  by  the  blossoming  orange-trees,  to  live  a  few  months 
in  the  bosom  of  that  glorious  scenery ! — That  is  life.  What 
folly  it  is  to  run  after  power,  a  name,  fortune !  But  at  Bel- 
girate there  is  everything ;  there  is  poetry,  there  is  glory !  I 
ought  to  have  made  myself  your  steward,  or,  as  that  dear 
tyrant  whom  we  cannot  hate  proposed  to  me,  live  there  as 
favaliere  servente,  only  our  passion  was  too  fierce  to  allow  of  it. 

"Farewell,  my  angel,  forgive  me  my  next  fit  of  sadness  in 
consideration  of  this  cheerful  mood;  it  has  come  as  a  beam 
of  light  from  the  torch  of  Hope,  which  has  hitherto  seemed 
to  me  a  Will-o'-the-wisp/' 

"How  he  loves  her!"  cried  Rosalie,  dropping  the  letter, 
which  seemed  heavy  in  her  hand.  "After  eleven  years  to 
write  like  this !" 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  347 

"Mariette,"  said  Mademoiselle  de  Watteville  to  her  maid 
next  morning,  "go  and  post  this  letter.  Tell  Jerome  that  I 
know  all  I  wish  to  know,  and  that  he  is  to  serve  Monsieur 
Albert  faithfully.  We  will  confess  our  sins,  you  and  I,  with- 
out saying  to  whom  the  letters  belonged,  nor  to  whom  they 
were  going.  I  was  in  the  wrong ;  I  alone  am  guilty." 

"Mademoiselle  has  been  crying  ?"  said  Mariette. 

"Yes,  but  I  do  not  want  that  my  mother  should  perceive 
it ;  give  me  some  very  cold  water." 

In  the  midst  of  the  storms  of  her  passion  Kosalie  often 
listened  to  the  voice  of  conscience.  Touched  by  the  beautiful 
fidelity  of  these  two  hearts,  she  had  just  said  her  prayers, 
telling  herself  that  there  was  nothing  left  to  her  but  to  be 
resigned,  and  to  respect  the  happiness  of  two  beings  worthy 
of  each  other,  submissive  to  fate,  looking  to  God  for  every- 
thing, without  allowing  themselves  any  criminal  acts  or 
wishes.  She  felt  a  better  woman,  and  had  a  certain  sense  of 
satisfaction  after  coming  to  this  resolution,  inspired  by  the 
natural  rectitude  of  youth.  And  she  was  confirmed  in  it 
by  a  girl's  idea :  She  was  sacrificing  herself  for  him. 

"She  does  not  know  how  to  love/'  thought  she.  "Ah!  if 
it  were  I — I  would  give  up  everything  to  a  man  who  loved 
me  so. — To  be  loved ! — When,  by  whom  shall  I  be  loved  ? 
That  little  Monsieur  de  Soulas  only  loves  my  money;  if  I 
were  poor,  he  would  not  even  look  at  me." 

"Rosalie,  my  child,  what  are  you  thinking  about?  You 
are  working  beyond  the  outline,"  said  the  Baroness  to  her 
daughter,  who  was  making  worsted-work  slippers  for  the 
Baron. 

Rosalie  spent  the  winter  of  1834-35  torn  by  secret  tumults ; 
but  in  the  spring,  in  the  month  of  April,  when  she  reached 
the  age  of  nineteen,  she  sometimes  thought  that  it  would  be 
a  fine  thing  to  triumph  over  a  Duchesse  d'Argaiolo.  In  silence 
and  solitude  the  prospect  of  this  struggle  had  fanned  her 
passion  and  her  evil  thoughts.  She  encouraged  her  romantic 
daring  by  making  plan  after  plan.  Although  such  characters 


348  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

are  an  exception,  there  are,  unfortunately,  too  many  Rosalies 
in  the  world,  and  this  story  contains  a  moral  which  ought 
to  serve  them  as  a  warning. 

In  the  course  of  this  winter  Albert  de  Savarus  had  quietly 
made  considerable  progress  in  Besangon.  Confident  of 
success,  he  now  impatiently  awaited  the  dissolution  of  the 
Chamber.  Among  the  men  of  the  moderate  party  he  had  won 
the  suffrages  of  one  of  the  makers  of  Besangon,  a  rich  con- 
tractor, who  had  very  wide  influence. 

Wherever  they  settled  the  Romans  took  immense  pains, 
and  spent  enormous  sums  to  have  an  unlimited  supply  of  good 
water  in  every  town  of  their  empire.  At  Besangon  they 
drank  the  water  from  Arcier,  a  hill  at  some  considerable 
distance  from  Besangon.  The  town  stands  in  a  horseshoe 
circumscribed  by  the  river  Doubs.  Thus,  to  restore  an  aque- 
duct in  order  to  drink  the  same  water  that  the  Romans  drank, 
in  a  town  watered  by  the  Doubs,  is  one  of  those  absurdities 
which  only  succeed  in  a  country  place  where  the  most  exem- 
plary gravity  prevails.  If  this  whim  could  be  brought  home 
to  the  hearts  of  the  citizens,  it  would  lead  to  considerable  out- 
lay, and  this  expenditure  would  benefit  the  influential  con- 
tractor. 

Albert  Savaron  de  Savarus  opined  that  the  water  of  the 
river  was  good  for  nothing  but  to  flow  under  a  suspension 
bridge,  and  that  the  only  drinkable  water  was  that  from  Ar- 
cier. Articles  were  printed  in  the  Review  which  merely  ex- 
pressed the  views  of  the  commercial  interest  of  Besangon.  The 
nobility  and  the  citizens,  the  moderates  and  the  legitimists, 
the  government  party  and  the  opposition,  everybody,  in  short, 
was  agreed  that  they  must  drink  the  same  water  as  the 
Romans,  and  boast  of  a  suspension  bridge.  The  question  of 
the  Arcier  water  was  the  order  of  the  day  at  Besangon.  At 
Besangon — as  in  the  matter  of  the  two  railways  to  Versailles 
— as  for  every  standing  abuse — there  were  private  interests 
unconfessed  which  gave  vital  force  to  this  idea.  The  reason- 
able folk  in  opposition  to  this  scheme,  who  were  indeed  but  few, 
were  regarded  as  old  women.  No  one  talked  of  anything  but 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  349 

of  Savaron's  two  projects.  And  thus,  after  eighteen  months 
of  underground  labor,  the  ambitious  lawyer  had  succeeded  in 
stirring  to  its  depths  the  most  stagnant  town  in  France,  the 
most  unyielding  to  foreign  influence,  in  finding  the  length 
of  its  foot,  to  use  a  vulgar  phrase,  and  exerting  a  preponderant 
influence  without  stirring  from  his  own  room.  He  had  solved 
the  singular  problem  of  how  to  be  powerful  without  being 
popular. 

In  the  course  of  this  winter  he  won  seven  lawsuits  for 
various  priests  of  Besangon.  At  moments  he  could  breathe 
freely  at  the  thought  of  his  coming  triumph.  This  intense 
desire,  which  made  him  work  so  many  interests  and  devise 
so  many  springs,  absorbed  the  last  strength  of  his  terribly 
overstrung  soul.  His  disinterestedness  was  lauded,  and  he 
took  his  clients'  fees  without  comment.  But  this  disinterest- 
edness was,  in  truth,  moral  usury;  he  counted  on  a  reward 
far  greater  to  him  than  all  the  gold  in  the  world. 

In  the  month  of  October  1834  he  had  bought,  ostensibly 
to  serve  a  merchant  who  was  in  difficulties,  with  money  lent 
him  by  Leopold  Hannequin,  a  house  which  gave  him  a 
qualification  for  election.  He  had  not  seemed  to  seek  or  de- 
sire this  advantageous  bargain. 

"You  are  really  a  remarkable  man,"  said  the  Abbe  de 
Grancey,  who,  of  course,  had  watched  and  understood  the 
lawyer.  The  Vicar-General  had  come  to  introduce  to  him 
a  Canon  who  needed  his  professional  advice.  "You  are  a 
priest  who  has  taken  the  wrong  turning."  This  observation 
struck  Savarus. 

Rosalie,  on  her  part,  had  made  up  her  mind,  in  her  strong 
girl's  head,  to  get  Monsieur  de  Savarus  into  the  drawing-room 
and  acquainted  with  the  society  of  the  Hotel  de  Rupt.  So 
far  she  had  limited  her  desires  to  seeing  and  hearing  Albert. 
She  had  compounded,  so  to  speak,  and  a  composition  is  often 
no  more  than  a  truce. 

Les  Rouxe)r,  the  inherited  estate  of  the  Wattevilles,  was 
worth  just  ten  thousand  francs  a  year;  but  in  other  hands  it 
would  have  yielded  a  great  deal  more.  The  Baron  in  his  in- 


350  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

difference — for  his  wife  was  to  have,  and  in  fact  had,  forty 
thousand  francs  a  year — left  the  management  of  les  Eouxey 
to  a  sort  of  factotum,  an  old  servant  of  the  Wattevilles  named 
Modinier.  Nevertheless,  whenever  the  Baron  and  his  wife 
wished  to  go  out  of  the  town,  they  went  to  les  Eouxey,  which 
is  very  picturesquely  situated.  The  chateau  and  the  park 
were,  in  fact,  created  by  the  famous  Watteville,  who  in  his 
active  old  age  was  passionately  attached  to  this  magnificent 
spot. 

Between  two  precipitous  hills — little  peaks  with  bare  sum- 
mits known  as  the  great  and  the  little  Eouxey — in  the  heart  of 
a  ravine  where  the  torrents  from  the  heights,  with  the  Dent  de 
Vilard  at  their  head,  come  tumbling  to  join  the  lovely  upper 
waters  of  the  Doubs,  Watteville  had  a  huge  dam  constructed, 
leaving  two  cuttings  for  the  overflow.  Above  this  dam  he 
made  a  beautiful  lake,  and  below  it  two  cascades;  and  these, 
uniting  a  few  yards  below  the  falls,  formed  a  lovely  little 
river  to  irrigate  the  barren,  uncultivated  valley,  hitherto 
devastated  by  the  torrent.  This  lake,  this  valley,  and  these 
two  hills  he  enclosed  in  a  ring  fence,  and  built  himself  a 
retreat  on  the  dam,  which  he  widened  to  two  acres  by  accumu- 
lating above  it  all  the  soil  which  had  to  be  removed  to  make 
a  channel  for  the  river  and  the  irrigation  canals. 

When  the  Baron  de  Watteville  thus  obtained  the  lake 
above  his  dam  he  was  owner  of  the  two  hills,  but  not  of  th<? 
upper  valley  thus  flooded,  through  which  there  had  been  at  all 
times  a  right-of-way  to  where  it  ends  in  a  horseshoe  under 
the  Dent  de  Vilard.  But  this  ferocious  old  man  was  so 
widely  dreaded,  that  so  long  as  he  lived  no  claim  was  urged 
by  the  inhabitants  of  Eiceys,  the  little  village  on  the  further 
side  of  the  Dent  de  Vilard.  When  the  Baron  died,  he  left 
the  slopes  of  the  two  Eouxey  hills  .-joined  by  a  strong  wall,  to 
protect  from  inundation  the  two  lateral  valleys  opening  into 
the  valley  of  Bonxey,  to  the  right  and  left  at  the  foot  of  the 
Dent  de  Vilard.  Thus  he  died  the  master  of  the  Dent  de 
Vilard. 

His  heirs  asserted  their  protectorate  of  the  village  of  Eiceys, 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  351 

and  so  maintained  the  usurpation.  The  old  assassin,  the  old 
renegade,  the  old  Abbe  Watteville,  ended  his  career  by  plant- 
ing trees  and  making  a  fine  road  over  the  shoulder  of  one  of 
the  Eouxey  hills  to  join  the  highroad.  The  estate  belonging 
to  this  park  and  house  was  extensive,  but  badly  cultivated; 
there  were  chalets  on  both  hills  and  neglected  forests  of 
timber.  It  was  all  wild  and  deserted,  left  to  the  care  of 
nature,  abandoned  to  chance  growths,  but  full  of  sublime  and 
unexpected  beauty.  You  may  now  imagine  les  Rouxey. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  complicate  this  story  by  relating  all  the 
prodigious  trouble  and  the  inventiveness  stamped  with  genius, 
by  which  Rosalie  achieved  her  end  without  allowing  it  to  be 
suspected.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  it  was  in  obedience  to 
her  mother  that  she  left  Besangon  in  the  month  of  May  1835, 
in  an  antique  traveling  carriage  drawn  by  a  pair  of  sturdy 
hired  horses,  and  accompanied  her  father  to  les  Rouxey. 

To  a  young  girl  love  lurks  in  everything.  When  she  rose, 
the  morning  after  her  arrival,  Mademoiselle  de  Watteville 
saw  from  her  bedroom  window  the  fine  expanse  of  water,  from 
which  the  light  mists  rose  like  smoke,  and  were  caught  in  the 
firs  and  larches,  rolling  up  and  along  the  hills  till  they  reached 
the  heights,  and  she  gave  a  cry  of  admiration. 

"They  loved  by  the  lakes  !  She  lives  by  a  lake !  A  lake  is 
certainly  full  of  love !"  she  thought. 

A  lake  fed  by  snows  has  opalescent  colors  and  a  trans- 
lucency  that  makes  it  one  huge  diamond;  but  when  it  is 
shut  in  like  that  of  les  Rouxey,  between  two  granite  masses 
covered  with  pines,  when  silence  broods  over  it  like  that  of 
the  Savannas  or  the  Steppes,  then  every  one  must  exclaim 
as  Rosalie  did. 

"We  owe  that,"  said  her  father,  "to  the  notorious  Watte- 
ville." 

"On  my  word,"  said  the  girl,  "he  did  his  best  to  earn  for- 
giveness. Let  us  go  in  a  boat  to  the  further  end ;  it  will  give 
us  an  appetite  for  breakfast." 

The  Baron  called  two  gardener  lads  who  knew  how  to  row, 
and  took  with  him  his  prime  minister  Modinier.  The  lake 


352  ALBERT  SAVAKUS 

was  about  six  acres  in  breadth,  in  some  places  ten  or  twelve, 
and  four  hundred  in  length.  Eosalie  soon  found  herself  at 
the  upper  end  shut  in  by  the  Dent  de  Vilard,  the  Jungfrau 
of  that  little  Switzerland. 

"Here  we  are,  Monsieur  le  Baron,"  said  Modinier,  signing 
to  the  gardeners  to  tie  up  the  boat ;  "will  you  come  and  look  ?" 

"Look  at  what  ?"  asked  Eosalie. 

"Oh,  nothing!"  exclaimed  the  Baron.  "But  you  are  a 
sensible  girl ;  we  have  some  little  secrets  between  us,  and  I  may 
tell  you  what  ruffles  my  mind.  Some  difficulties  have  arisen 
since  1830  between  the  village  authorities  of  Eiceys  and  me, 
on  account  of  this  very  Dent  de  Vilard,  and  I  want  to  settle 
the  matter  without  your  mother's  knowing  anything  about 
it,  for  she  is  stubborn ;  she  is  capable  of  flinging  fire  and 
flames  broadcast,  particularly  if  she  should  hear  that  the 
Mayor  of  Eiceys,  a  republican,  got  up  this  action  as  a  sop  to 
his  people." 

Eosalie  had  presence  of  mind  enough  to  disguise  her  de- 
light, so  as  to  work  more  effectually  on  her  father. 

"What  action  ?"  said  she. 

"Mademoiselle,  the  people  of  Eiceys,"  said  Modinier,  "have 
long  enjoyed  the  right  of  grazing  and  cutting  fodder  on 
their  side  of  the  Dent  de  Vilard.  Now  Monsieur  Chantonnit, 
the  Maire  since  1830,  declares  that  the  whole  Dent  belongs 
to  his  district,  and  maintains  that  a  hundred  years  ago,  or 
more,  there  was  a  way  through  our  grounds.  You  under- 
stand that  in  that  case  we  should  no  longer  have  them  to  our- 
selves. Then  this  barbarian  would  end  by  saying,  what  the 
old  men  in  the  village  say,  that  the  ground  occupied  by  the 
lake  was  appropriated  by  the  Abbe  de  Watteville.  That  would 
be  the  end  of  les  Eouxey ;  what  next  ?" 

"Indeed,  my  child,  between  ourselves,  it  is  the  truth," 
said  Monsieur  de  Watteville  simply.  "The  land  is  an  usurpa- 
tion, with  no  title-deed  but  lapse  of  time.  And,  therefore, 
to  avoid  all  worry,  I  should  wish  to  come. to  a  friendly  un- 
derstanding as  to  my  border  line  on  this  side  of  the  Dent 
de  Vilard,  and  I  will  then  raise  a  wall." 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  353 

"If  you  give  way  to  the  municipality,  it  will  swallow  you 
up.  You  ought  to  have  threatened  Riceys." 

"That  is  just  what  I  told  the  master  last  evening,"  said 
Modinier.  "But  in  confirmation  of  that  view  I  proposed  that 
he  should  come  to  see  whether,  on  this  side  of  the  Dent  or  on 
the  other,  there  may  not  be,  high  or  low,  some  traces  of  an 
enclosure." 

For  a  century  the  Dent  de  Vilard  had  been  used  by  both 
parties  without  coming  to  extremities;  it  stood  as  a  sort  of 
party  wall  between  the  communes  of  Riceys  and  les  Rouxey, 
yielding  little  profit.  Indeed,  the  object  in  dispute,  being  cov- 
ered with  snow  for  six  months  in  the  year,  was  of  a  nature  to 
cool  their  ardor.  Thus  it  required  all  the  hot  blast  by  which 
the  revolution  of  1830  inflamed  the  advocates  of  the  people, 
to  stir  up  this  matter,  by  which  Monsieur  Chantonnit,  the 
Maire  of  Riceys,  hoped  to  give  a  dramatic  turn  to  his  career 
on  the  peaceful  frontier  of  Switzerland,  and  to  immortalize 
his  term  of  office.  Chantonnit,  as  his  name  shows,  was  a  na- 
tive of  Neuchatel. 

"My  dear  father,"  said  Rosalie,  as  they  got  into  the  boat 
again,  "I  agree  with  Modinier.  If  you  wish  to  secure  the  joint 
possession  of  the  Dent  de  Vilard,  you  must  act  with  decision, 
and  get  a  legal  opinion  which  will  protect  you  against  this 
enterprising  Chantonnit.  Why  should  you  be  afraid?  Get 
the  famous  lawyer  Savaron — engage  him  at  once,  lest  Chan- 
tonnit should  place  the  interests  of  the  village  in  his  hands. 
The  man  who  won  the  case  for  the  Chapter  against  the  town 
can  certainly  win  that  of  Watteville  versus  Riceys  !  Besides," 
she  added,  "les  Rouxey  will  some  day  be  mine — not  for  a  long 
time  yet,  I  trust. — Well,  then,  do  not  leave  me  with  a  lawsuit 
on  my  hands.  I  like  this  place;  I  shall  often  live  here,  and 
add  to  it  as  much  as  possible.  On  those  banks,"  and  she 
pointed  to  the  feet  of  the  two  hills,  "I  shall  cut  flower-beds 
and  make  the  loveliest  English  gardens.  Let  us  go  to  Be- 
sangon  and  bring  back  with  us  the  Abbe  de  Grancey,  Monsieur 
Savaron,  and  my  mother,  if  she  cares  to  come.  You  can  then 
make  up  your  mind;  but  in  your  place  I  should  have  done 


354  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

so  already.  Your  name  is  Watteville,  and  you  are  afraid  of  a 
fight !  If  you  should  .lose  your  case — well,  I  will  never  re- 
proach you  by  a  word  I" 

"Oh,  if  that  is  the  way  you  take  it,"  said  the  Baron,  "I  am 
quite  ready;  I  will  see  the  lawyer." 

"Besides,  a  lawsuit  is  really  great  fun.  It  brings  some  in- 
terest into  life,  with  coming  and  going  and  raging  over  it. 
You  will  have  a  great  deal  to  do  before  you  can  get  hold  of  the 
judges. — We  did  not  see  the  Abbe  de  Grancey  for  three  weeks, 
he  was  so  busy !" 

"But  the  very  existence  of  the  Chapter  was  involved,"  said 
Monsieur  de  Watteville;  "and  then  the  Archbishop's  pride, 
his  conscience,  everything  that  makes  up  the  life  of  the  priest- 
hood, was  at  stake.  That  Savaron  does  not  know  what  he  did 
for  the  Chapter !  He  saved  it !" 

"Listen  to  me,"  said  his  daughter  in  his  ear,  "if  you  secure 
Monsieur  de  Savaron,  you  will  gain  your  suit,  won't  you? 
Well,  then,  let  me  advise  you.  You  cannot  get  at  Monsieur 
Savaron  excepting  through  Monsieur  de  Grancey.  Take  my 
word  for  it,  and  let  us  together  talk  to  the  dear  Abbe  without 
my  mother's  presence  at  the  interview,  for  I  know  a  way  of 
persuading  him  to  bring  the  lawyer  to  us." 

"It  will  be  very  difficult  to  avoid  mentioning  it  to  your 
mother !" 

"The  Abbe  de  Grancey  will  settle  that  afterwards.  But 
just  make  up  your  mind  to  promise  your  vote  to  Monsieur 
Savaron  at  the  next  election,  and  you  will  see!" 

"Go  to  the  election!  take  the  oath?"  cried  the  Baron  de 
Watteville. 

"What  then!"  said -she. 

"And  what  will  your  mother  say  ?" 

"She  may  even  desire  you  to  do  it,"  replied  Rosalie,  know- 
ing as  she  did  from  Albert's  letter  to  Leopold  how  deeply  the 
Vicar-General  had  pledged  himself. 

Four  days  after,  the  Abbe  de  Grancey  called  very  early  one 
morning  on  Albert  de  Savarus,  having  announced  his  visit  the 
day  before.  The  old  priest  had  come  to  win  over  the  great 


ALBERT  SAVARTJS  355 

lawyer  to  the  house  of  the  Wattevilles,  a  proceeding  which 
shows  how  much  tact  and  subtlety  Eosalie  must  have  employed 
in  an  underhand  way. 

"What  can  I  do  for  you,  Monsieur  le  Vicaire-General  ?" 
asked  Savarus. 

The  Abbe,  who  told  his  story  with  admirable  frankness,  was 
coldly  heard  by  Albert. 

"Monsieur  FAbbe,"  said  he,  "it  is  out  of  the  question  that 
I  should  defend  the  interests  of  the  Wattevilles,  and  you 
shall  understand  why.  My  part  in  this  town  is  to  remain  per- 
fectly neutral.  I  will  display  no  colors;  I  must  remain  a 
mystery  till  the  eve  of  my  election.  Now,  to  plead  for  the 
Wattevilles  would  mean  nothing  in  Paris,  but  here ! — Here, 
where  everything  is  discussed,  I  should  be  supposed  by  every 
one  to  be  an  ally  of  your  Faubourg  Saint-Germain." 

"What !  do  you  suppose  that  you  can  remain  unknown  on 
the  day  of  the  election,  when  the  candidates  must  oppose  each 
other  ?  It  must  then  become  known  that  your  name  is  Savaron 
de  Savarus,  that  you  have  held  the  appointment  of  Master  of 
Appeals,  that  you  are  a  man  of  the  Restoration !" 

"On  the  day  of  the  election/'  said  Savarus,  "I  will  be  all 
I  am  expected  to  be ;  and  I  intend  to  speak  at  the  preliminary 
meetings." 

"If  you  have  the  support  of  Monsieur  de  Watteville  and  his 
party,  you  will  get  a  hundred  votes  in  a  mass,  and  far  more 
to  be  trusted  than  those  on  which  you  rely.  It  is  always  pos- 
sible to  produce  division  of  interests;  convictions  are  insep- 
arable." 

"The  deuce  is  in  it !"  said  Savarus.  "I  am  attached  to  you, 
and  I  could  do  a  great  deal  for  you,  Father !  Perhaps  we  may 
compound  with  the  Devil.  Whatever  Monsieur  de  Watteville's 
business  may  be,  by  engaging  Girardet,  and  prompting  him, 
it  will  be  possible  to  drag  the  proceedings  out  till  the  elections 
are  over.  I  will  not  undertake  to  plead  till  the  day  after  I  am 
returned." 

"Do  this  one  thing,"  said  the  Abbe.  "Come  to  the  Hotel 
de  Rupt :  there  is  a  young  person  of  nineteen  there  who,  one  of 


356  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

these  days,  will  have  a  hundred  thousand  francs  a  year,  and 
you  can  seem  to  be  paying  your  court  to  her " 

"Ah !  the  youno-  lady  I  sometimes  see  in  the  kiosk  ?" 

"Yes,  Mademoiselle  Rosalie,"  replied  the  Abbe  de  Grancey. 
"You  are  ambitious.  If  she  takes  a  fancy  to  you,  you  may 
be  everything  an  ambitious  man  can  wish — who  knows?  A 
Minister  perhaps.  A  man  can  always  be  a  Minister  who  adds 
a  hundred  thousand  francs  a  year  to  your  amazing  talents." 

"Monsieur  1'Abbe,  if  Mademoiselle  de  Watteville  had  three 
times  her  fortune,  and  adored  me  into  the  bargain,  it  would 
be  impossible  that  I  should  marry  her 

"You  are  married?"  exclaimed  the  Abbe. 

"Not  in  church  nor  before  the  Maire,  but  morally  speak- 
ing," said  Savarus. 

"That  is  even  worse  when  a  man  cares  about  it  as  you  seem 
to  care,"  replied  the  Abbe.  "Everything  that  is  not  done, 
can  be  undone.  Do  not  stake  your  fortune  and  your  prospects 
on  a  woman's  liking,  any  more  than  a  wise  man  counts  on  a 
dead  man's  shoes  before  starting  on  bis  way." 

"Let  us  say  no  more  about  Mademoiselle  de  Watteville," 
said  Albert  gravely,  "and  agree  as  to  the  facts.  At  your  de- 
sire— for  I  have  a  regard  and  respect  for  you — I  will  appear 
for  Monsieur  de  Watteville,  but  after  the  elections.  Until 
then  Girardet  must  conduct  the  case  under  my  instructions. 
That  is  the  most  I  can  do." 

"But  there  are  questions  involved  which  can  only  be  settled 
after  inspection  of  the  localities,"  said  the  Vicar-General. 

"Girardet  can  go,"  said  Savarus.  "I  cannot  allow  myself, 
in  the  face  of  a  town  I  know  so  well,  to  take  any  step  which 
might  compromise  the  supreme  interests  that  lie  beyond  my 
election." 

The  Abbe  left  Savarus  after  giving  him  a  keen  look,  in 
which  he  seemed  to  be  laughing  at  the  young  athlete's  uncom- 
promising politics,  while  admiring  bis  firmness. 

"Ah !  I  would  have  dragged  my  father  into  a  lawsuit — I 
would  have  done  anything  to  get  him  here !"  cried  Rosalie 
to  herself,  standing  in  the  kiosk  and  looking  at  the  lawyer  in 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  357 

his  room,  the  day  after  Albert's  interview  with  the  Abbe,  who 
had  reported  the  result  to  her  father.  "I  would  have  com- 
mitted any  mortal  sin,  and  you  will  not  enter  the  Wattevilles' 
drawing-room ;  I  may  not  hear  your  fine  voice !  You  make 
conditions  when  your  help  is  required  by  the  Wattevilles  and 
the  Eupts ! — Well,  God  knows,  I  meant  to  be  content  with 
these  small  joys;  with  seeing  you,  hearing  you  speak,  going 
with  you  to  les  Eouxey,  that  your  presence  might  to  me  make 
the  place  sacred.  That  was  all  I  asked.  But  now — now  I 
mean  to  be  your  wife. — Yes,  yes ;  look  at  her  portrait,  at  her 
drawing-room,  her  bedroom,  at  the  four  sides  of  her  villa, 
the  points  of  view  from  her  gardens.  You  expect  her  statue  ? 
I  will  make  her  marble  herself  towards  you ! — After  all,  the 
woman  does  not  love.  Art,  science,  books,  singing,  music, 
have  absorbed  half  her  senses  and  her  intelligence.  She  is 
old,  too ;  she  is  past  thirty ;  my  Albert  will  not  be  happy  I" 

"What  is  the  matter  that  you  stay  here,  Eosalie?"  asked 
her  mother,  interrupting  her  reflections.  "Monsieur  de 
Soulas  is  in  the  drawing-room,  and  he  observed  your  attitude, 
which  certainly  betrays  more  thoughtfulness  than  is  due  at 
your  age." 

"Then,  is  Monsieur  de  Soulas  a  foe  to  thought?"  asked 
Eosalie. 

"Then  you  were  thinking  ?"  said  Madame  de  Watteville. 

"Why,  yes,  mamma." 

"Why,  no !  you  were  not  thinking.  You  were  staring  at 
that  lawyer's  window  with  an  attention  that  is  neither  becom- 
ing nor  decent,  and  which  Monsieur  de  Soulas,  of  all  men, 
ought  never  to  have  observed." 

"Why?"  said  Eosalie. 

"It  is  time,"  said  the  Baroness,  "that  you  should  know  what 
our  intentions  are.  Amedee  likes  you,  and  you  will  not  be 
unhappy  as  Comtesse  de  Soulas." 

Eosalie,  as  white  as  a  lily,  made  no  reply,  so  completely 

was  she  stupefied  by  contending  feelings.     And  yet,  in  the 

presence  of  the  man  she  had  this  instant  begun  to  hate 

vehemently,  she  forced  the  kind  of  smile  which  a  ballet-dancer 

-24 


358  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

puts  on  for  the  public.  Nay,  she  could  even  laugh;  she  had 
the  strength  to  conceal  her  rage,  which  presently  subsided, 
for  she  was  determined  to  make  use  of  this  fat  simpleton  to 
further  her  designs. 

"Monsieur  Amedee,"  said  she,  at  a  moment  when  her 
mother  was  walking  ahead  of  them  in  the  garden,  affecting  to 
leave  the  young  people  together,  "were  you  not  aware  that 
Monsieur  Albert  Savaron  de  Savarus  is  a  Legitimist  ?" 

"A  Legitimist?" 

"Until  1830  he  was  Master  of  Appeals  to  the  Council  of 
State,  attached  to  the  supreme  Ministerial  Council,  and  in  fa- 
vor with  the  Dauphin  and  Dauphiness.  It  would  be  very  good 
of  you  to  say  nothing  against  him,  but  it  would  be  better  still 
if  you  would  attend  the  election  this  year,  carry  the  day,  and 
hinder  that  poor  Monsieur  de  Chavoncourt  from  representing 
the  town  of  Besangon." 

"What  sudden  interest  have  you  in  this  Savaron  ?" 

"Monsieur  Albert  Savaron  de  Savarus,  the  natural  son  of 
the  Comte  de  Savarus — pray  keep  the  secret  of  my  indiscre- 
tion— if  he  is  returned  deputy,  will  be  our  advocate  in  the 
suit  about  les  Rouxey.  Les  Eouxey,  my  father  tells  me,  will 
be  my  property ;  T  intend  to  live  there,  it  is  a  lovely  place ! 
I  should  be  broken-hearted  at  seeing  that  fine  piece  of  the 
great  de  Watteville's  work  destroyed." 

"The  devil !"  thought  Amedee,  as  he  left  the  house.  "The 
heiress  is  not  such  a  fool  as  her  mother  thinks  her." 

Monsieur  de  Chavoncourt  is  a  Royalist,  of  the  famous  221. 
Hence,  from  the  day  after  the  revolution  of  July,  he  always 
preached  the  salutary  doctrine  of  taking  the  oaths  and  re- 
sisting the  present  order  of  things,  after  the  pattern  of  the 
Tories  against  the  Whigs  in  England.  This  doctrine  was 
not  acceptable  to  the  Legitimists,  who,  in  their  defeat,  had  the 
wit  to  divide  in  their  opinions,  and  to  trust  to  the  force  of 
inertia  and  to  Providence.  Monsieur  de  Chavoncourt  was  not 
wholly  trusted  by  his  own  party,  but  seemed  to  the  Moderates 
the  best  man  to  choose ;  they  preferred  the  triumph  of  his  half- 
hearted opinions  to  the  acclamation  of  a  Republican  who 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  359 

should  combine  the  votes  of  the  enthusiasts  and  the  patriots. 
Monsieur  de  Chavoncourt,  highly  respected  in  Besangon, 
was  the  representative  of  an  old  parliamentary  family;  his  for- 
tune, of  about  fifteen  thousand  francs  a  year,  was  not  an 
offence  to  anybody,  especially  as  he  had  a  son  and  three  daugh- 
ters. With  such  a  family,  ?fteen  thousand  francs  a  year  are 
a  mere  nothing.  Now  when,  iinder  these  circumstances,  the 
father  of  the  family  is  above  bribery,  it  would  be  hard  if  the 
electors  did  not  esteem  him.  Electors  wax  enthusiastic  over 
a  beau  ideal  of  parliamentary  virtue,  just  as  the  audience 
in  the  pit  do  at  the  representation  of  the  generous  sentiments 
they  so  little  practise. 

Madame  de  Chavoncourt,  at  this  time  a  woman  of  forty, 
was  one  of  the  beauties  of  Besangon.  While  the  Chamber 
was  sitting,  she  lived  meagrely  in  one  of  their  country  places 
to  recoup  herself  by  economy  for  Monsieur  de  Chavoncourt's 
expenses  in  Paris.  In  the  winter  she  received  very  creditably 
once  a  week,  on  Tuesdays,  understanding  her  business  as 
mistress  of  the  hou'se.  Young  Chavoncourt,  a  youth  of  two- 
and-twenty,  and  another  young  gentlemen,  named  Monsieur 
de  Vauchelles,  no  richer  than  Amedee  and  his  school-friend, 
were  his  intimate  allies.  They  made  excursions  together  to 
Granvelle,  and  sometimes  went  out  shooting;  they  were  so 
well  known  to  be  inseparable  that  they  were  invited  to  the 
country  together. 

Rosalie,  who  was  intimate  with  the  Chavoncourt  girls,  knew 
that  the  three  young  men  had  no  secrets  from  each  other. 
She  reflected  that  if  Monsieur  de  Soulas  should  repeat  her 
words,  it  would  be  to  his  two  companions.  Now,  Monsieur 
de  Vauchelles  had  his  matrimonial  plans,  as  Amedee  had  his ; 
he  wished  to  marry  Victoire,  the  eldest  of  the  Chavoncourts, 
on  whom  an  old  aunt  was  to  settle  an  estate  worth  seven  thou- 
sand francs  a  year,  and  a  hundred  thousand  francs  in  hard 
cash,  when  the  contract  should  be  signed.  Victoire  was  this 
aunt's  god-daughter  and  favorite  niece.  Consequently,  young 
Chavoncourt  and  his  friend  Vauchelles  would  be  sure  to  warn 
Monsieur  de  Chavoncourt  of  the  danger  he  was  in  from  Al- 
bert's candidature. 


380  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

But  this  did  not  satisfy  Eosalie.  She  sent  the  Prefet  of  the 
department  a  letter  written  with  her  left  hand,  signed  "A 
friend  to  Louis  Philippe"  in  which  she  informed  him  of  the 
secret  intentions  of  Monsieur  Albert  de  Savarus,  pointing 
out  the  serious  support  a  Eoyalist  orator  might  give  to 
Berryer,  and  revealing  to  him  the  deeply  artful  course  pur- 
sued by  the  lawyer  during  his  two  years'  residence  at  Besan- 
gon.  The  Prefet  was  a  capable  man,  a  personal  enemy  of  the 
Eoyalist  party,  devoted  by  conviction  to  the  Government  of 
July — in  short,  one  of  those  men  of  whom,  in  the  Eue  de 
Grenelle,  the  Minister  of  the  Interior  could  say,  "We  have  a 
capital  Prefet  at  Besangon." — The  Prefet  read  the  letter,  and, 
in  obedience  to  its  instructions,  he  burnt  it. 

Eosalie  aimed  at  preventing  Albert's  election,  so  as  to 
keep  him  five  years  longer  at  Besangon. 

At  that  time  an  election  was  a  fight  between  parties, 
and  in  order  to  win,  the  Ministry  chose  its  ground  by  choosing 
the  moment  when  it  would  give  battle.  The  elections  were 
therefore  not  to  take  place  for  three  months  yet.  When  a 
man's  whole  life  depends  on  an  election,  the  period  that 
elapses  between  the  issuing  of  the  writs  for  convening  the 
electoral  bodies,  and  the  day  fixed  for  their  meetings,  is  an 
interval  during  which  ordinary  vitality  is  suspended.  Eosalie 
fully  understood  how  much  latitude  Albert's  absorbed  state 
would  leave  her  during  these  three  months.  By  promising 
Mariette — as  she  afterwards  confessed — to  take  both  her  and 
Jerome  into  her  service,  she  induced  the  maid  to  bring  her  all 
the  letters  Albert  might  send  to  Italy,  and  those  addressed  to 
him  from  that  country.  And  all  the  time  she  was  pondering 
these  machinations,  the  extraordinary  girl  was  working  slip- 
pers for  her  father  with  the  most  innocent  air  in  the  world. 
She  even  made  a  greater  display  than  ever  of  candor  and  sim- 
plicity, quite  understanding  how  valuable  that  candor  and 
innocence  would  be  to  her  ends. 

"My  daughter  grows  quite  charming !"  said  Madame  de 
Watteville. 

Two  months  before  the  election  a  meeting  was  held  at  the 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  361 

house  of  Monsieur  Boucher  senior,  composed  of  the  contractor 
who  expected  to  get  the  work  for  the  aqueduct  for  the  Arcier 
waters;  of  Monsieur  Boucher's  father-in-law;  of  Monsieur 
Granet,  the  influential  man  to  whom  Savarus  had  done  a 
service,  and  who  was  to  nominate  him  as  a  candidate;  of 
Girardet  the  lawyer;  of  the  printer  of  the  Eastern  Review; 
and  of  the  President  of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce.  In  fact, 
the  assembly  consisted  of  twenty-seven  persons  in  all,  men 
who  in  the  provinces  are  regarded  as  bigwigs.  Each  man 
represented  on  an  average  six  votes,  but  in  estimating  their 
value  they  said  ten,  for  men  always  begin  by  exaggerating 
their  own  influence.  Among  these  twenty-seven  was  one  who 
was  wholly  devoted  to  the  Prefet,  one  false  brother  who 
secretly  looked  for  some  favor  from  the  Ministry,  either  for 
himself  or  for  some  one  belonging  to  him. 

At  this  preliminary  meeting,  it  was  agreed  that  Savaron 
the  lawyer  should  be  named  as  candidate,  a  motion  received 
with  such  enthusiasm  as  no  one  looked  for  from  Besangon. 
Albert,  waiting  at  home  for  Alfred  Boucher  to  fetch  him, 
was  chatting  with  the  Abbe  de  Grancey,  who  was  interested 
in  this  absorbing  ambition.  Albert  had  appreciated  the 
priest's  vast  political  capacities;  and  the  priest,  touched 
by  the  young  man's  entreaties,  had  been  willing  to  become 
his  guide  and  adviser  in  this  culminating  struggle.  The 
Chapter  did  not  love  Monsieur  de  Chavoncourt,  for  it  was  his 
wife's  brother-in-law,  as  President  of  the  Tribunal,  who  had 
lost  the  famous  suit  for  them  in  the  lower  Court. 

"You  are  betrayed,  my  dear  fellow,"  said  the  shrewd  and 
worthy  Abbe,  in  that  gentle,  calm  voice  which  old  priests 
acquire. 

"Betrayed !"  cried  the  lover,  struck  to  the  heart. 

"By  whom  I  know  not  at  all,"  the  priest  replied.  "But 
at  the  Prefecture  your  plans  are  known,  and  your  hand  read 
like  a  book.  At  this  moment  I  have  no  advice  to  give  you. 
Such  affairs  need  consideration.  As  for  this  evening,  take 
the  bull  by  the  horns,  anticipate  the  blow.  Tell  them  all 


362  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

your  previous  life,  and  thus  you  will  mitigate  the  effect  of  the 
discovery  on  the  good  folks  of  Besangon." 

"Oh,  I  was  prepared  for  it,"  said  Albert  in  a  broken  voice. 

"You  would  not  benefit  by  my  advice;  you  had  the  oppor- 
tunity of  making  an  impression  at  the  Hotel  de  Eupt;  you 
do  not  know  the  advantage  you  would  have  gained " 

"What?" 

"The  unanimous  support  of  the  Royalists,  an  immediate 
readiness  to  go  to  the  election — in  short,  above  a  hundred 
votes.  Adding  to  these  what,  among  ourselves,  we  call  the 
ecclesiastical  vote,  though  you  were  not  yet  nominated,  you 
were  master  of  the  votes  by  ballot.  Under  such  circumstances, 
a  man  may  temporize,  may  make  his  way 

Alfred  Boucher  when  he  came  in,  full  of  enthusiasm,  to  an- 
nounce the  decision  of  the  preliminary  meeting,  found  the 
Vicar-General  and  the  lawyer  cold,  calm,  and  grave. 

"Good-night,  Monsieur  1'Abbe/'  said  Albert.  "We  will 
talk  of  your  business  at  greater  length  when  the  elections  are 
over." 

And  he  took  Alfred's  arm,  after  .pressing  Monsieur  de 
Grancey's  hand  with  meaning.  The  priest  looked  at  the  am- 
bitious man,  whose  face  at  that  moment  wore  the  lofty  ex- 
pression which  a  general  may  have  when  he  hears  the  first 
gun  fired  for  a  battle.  He  raised  his  eyes  to  heaven,  and  left 
the  room,  saying  to  himself,  "What  a  priest  he  would  make !" 

Eloquence  is  not  at  the  Bar.  The  pleader  rarely  puts  forth 
the  real  powers  of  his  soul ;  if  he  did,  he  would  die  of  it  in  a 
few  years.  Eloquence  is,  nowadays,  rarely  in  the  pulpit ;  but 
it  is  found  on  certain  occasions  in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies, 
when  an  ambitious  man  stakes  all  to  win  all,  or,  stung  by  a 
myriad  darts,  at  a  given  moment  bursts  into  speech.  But 
it  is  still  more  certainly  found  in  some  privileged  beings,  at 
the  inevitable  hour  when  their  claims  must  either  triumph 
or  be  wrecked,  and  when  they  are  forced  to  speak.  Thus  at 
this  meeting,  Albert  Savarus,  feeling  the  necessity  of  winning 
himself  some  supporters,  displayed  all  the  faculties  of  his 
soul  and  the  resources  of  his  intellect.  He  entered  the  room 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  363 

well,  without  awkwardness  or  arrogance,  without  weakness, 
without  cowardice,  quite  gravely,  and  was  not  dismayed  at 
finding  himself  among  twenty  or  thirty  men.  The  news  of 
the  meeting  and  of  its  determination  had  already  brought 
a  few  docile  sheep  to  follow  the  bell. 

Before  listening  to  Monsieur  Boucher,  who  was  about  to 
deluge  him  with  a  speech  announcing  the  decision  of  the 
Boucher  Committee,  Albert  begged  for  silence,  and,  as  he 
shook  hands  with  Monsieur  Boucher,  tried  to  warn  him,  by 
a  sign,  of  an  unexpected  danger. 

"My  young  friend,  Alfred  Boucher,  has  just  announced  to 
me  the  honor  you  have  done  me.  But  before  that  decision 
is  irrevocable,"  said  the  lawyer,  "I  think  that  I  ought  to  ex- 
plain to  you  who  and  what  your  candidate  is,  so  as  to  leave 
you  free  to  take  back  your  word  if  my  declaration  should 
disturb  your  conscience !" 

This  exordium  was  followed  by  profound  silence.  Some 
of  the  men  thought  it  showed  a  noble  impulse. 

Albert  gave  a  sketch  of  his  previous  career,  telling  them  his 
real  name,  his  action  under  the  Restoration,  and  revealing 
himself  as  a  new  man  since  his  arrival  at  Besangon,  while 
pledging  himself  for  the  future.  This  address  held  his  hearers 
breathless,  it  was  said.  These  men,  all  with  different  interests, 
were  spellbound  by  the  brilliant  eloquence  that  flowed  at  boil- 
ing heat  from  the  heart  and  soul  of  this  ambitious  spirit. 
Admiration  silenced  reflection.  Only  one  thing  was  clear — 
the  thing  which  Albert  wished  to  get  into  their  heads ; 

Was  it  not  far  better  for  the  town  to  have  one  of  those  men 
who  are  born  to  govern  society  at  large  than  a  mere  voting-ma- 
chine? A  statesman  carries  power  with  him.  A  common- 
place deputy,  however  incorruptible,  is  but  a  conscience.  What 
a  glory  for  Provence  to  have  found  a  Mirabeau,  to  return 
the  only  statesman  since  1830  that  the  revolution  of  July  had 
produced ! 

Under  the  pressure  of  this  eloquence,  all  the  audience  be- 
lieved it  great  enough  to  become  a  splendid  political  instru- 
ment in  the  hands  of  their  representative.  They  all  saw  in 


8«4  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

Albert  Savaron,  Savarus  the  great  Minister.  And,  reading 
the  secret  calculations  of  his  constituents,  the  clever  candidate 
gave  them  to  understand  that  they  would  be  the  first  to  enjoy 
the  right  of  profiting  by  his  influence. 

This  confession  of  faith,  this  ambitious  programme,  this 
retrospect  of  his  life  and  character  was,  according  to  the  only 
man  present  who  was  capable  of  judging  of  Savarus  (he  has 
since  become  one  of  the  leading  men  of  Besanc,on),  a  master- 
piece of  skill  and  of  feeling,  of  fervor,  interest,  and  fascmat  ion. 
This  whirlwind  carried  away  the  electors.  Never  had  any 
man  had  such  a  triumph.  But,  unfortunately,  speech,  a 
weapon  only  for  close  warfare,  has  only  an  immediate  effect. 
Eeflection  kills  the  word  when  the  word  ceases  to  overpower 
reflection.  If  the  votes  had  then  been  taken,  Albert's  name 
would  undoubtedly  have  come  out  of  the  ballot-box.  At  the 
moment,  he  was  conqueror.  But  he  must  conquer  every  day 
for  two  months. 

Albert  went  home  quivering.  The  townsfolk  had  applaud- 
ed him,  and  he  had  achieved  the  great  point  of  silencing  be- 
forehand the  malignant  talk  to  which  his  early  career  might 
give  rise.  The  commercial  interest  of  Besangon  had  nomi- 
nated the  lawyer,  Albert  Savaron  de  Savarus,  as  its  candidate. 

Alfred  Boucher's  enthusiasm,  at  first  infectious,  presently 
became  blundering. 

The  Prefet,  alarmed  by  this  success,  set  to  work  to  count 
the  Ministerial  votes,  and  contrived  to  have  a  secret  inter- 
view with  Monsieur  de  Chavoncourt,  so  as  to  effect  a  coalition 
in  their  common  interests.  Every  day,  without  Albert's  be- 
ing able  to  discover  how,  the  voters  in  the  Boucher  committee 
diminished  in  number. 

Nothing  could  resist  the  slow  grinding  of  the  Prefecture. 
Three  of  four  clever  men  would  say  to  Albert's  clients,  "Will 
the  deputy  defend  you  and  win  your  lawsuits  ?  Will  he  give 
you  advice,  draw  up  your  contracts,  arrange  your  compro- 
mises ? — He  will  be  your  slave  for  five  years  1  anger,  if,  instead 
of  returning  him  to  the  Chamber,  you  only  hold  out  the  hope 
of  his  going  there  five  years  hence." 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  365 

This  calculation  did  Savarus  all  the  more  mischief,  because 
the  wives  of  some  of  the  merchants  had  already  made  it.  The 
parties  interested  in  the  matter  of  the  bridge  and  that  of  the 
water  from  Arcier  could  not  hold  out  against  a  talking-to 
from  a  clever  Ministerialist,  who  proved  to  them  that  their 
safety  lay  at  the  Prefecture,  and  not  in  the  hands  of  an  am- 
bitious man.  Each  day  was  a  check  for  Savarus,  though  each 
day  the  battle  was  led  by  him  and  fought  by  his  lieutenants 
— a  battle  of  words,  speeches,  and  proceedings.  He  dared  not 
go  to  the  Vicar-General,  and  the  Vicar-General  never  showed 
himself.  Albert  rose  and  went  to  bed  in  a  fever,  his  brain  on 
fire. 

At  last  the  day  dawned  of  the  first  struggle,  practically 
the  show  of  hands ;  the  votes  are  counted,  the  candidates  esti- 
mate their  chances,  and  clever  men  can  prophesy  their  failure 
or  success.  It  is  a  decent  hustings,  without  the  mob,  but  for- 
midable; agitation,  though  it  is  not  allowed  any  physical 
display,  as  it  is  in  England,  is  not  the  less  profound.  The 
English  fight  these  battles  with  their  fists,  the  French  with 
hard  words.  Our  neighbors  have  a  scrimmage,  the  French 
try  their  fate  by  cold  combinations  calmly  worked  out.  This 
particular  political  business  is  carried  out  in  opposition  to  the 
character  of  the  two  nations. 

The  Radical  party  named  their  candidate;  Monsieur  de 
Chavoncourt  came  forward;  then  Albert  appeared,  and  was 
accused  by  the  Chavoncourt  committee  and  the  Radicals  of 
being  an  uncompromising  man  of  the  Right,  a  second  Berryer. 
The  Ministry  had  their  candidate,  a  stalking-horse,  useful 
only  to  receive  the  purely  Ministerial  votes.  The  votes,  thus 
divided,  gave  no  result.  The  Republican  candidate  had 
twenty,  the  Ministry  got  fifty,  Albert  had  seventy,  Monsieur 
de  Chavoncourt  obtained  sixty-seven.  But  the  Prefet's  party 
had  perfidiously  made  thirty  of  its  most  devoted  adherents 
vote  for  Albert,  so  as  to  deceive  the  enemy.  The  votes  for 
Monsieur  de  Chavoncourt.,  added  to  the  eighty  votes — the 
real  number — at  the  disposal  of  the  Prefecture,  would  carry 
the  election,  if  only  the  Prefet  could  succeed  in  gaining  over 


S66  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

a  few  of  the  Radicals.  A  hundred  and  sixty  votes  were  not  re- 
corded: those  of  Monsieur  de  Grancey's  following  and  the 
Legitimists.  • 

The  show  of  hands  at  an  election,  like  a  dress  rehearsal  at 
a  theatre,  is  the  most  deceptive  thing  in  the  world.  Albert 
Savarus  came  home,  putting  a  brave  face  on  the  matter,  but 
half  dead.  He  had  had  the  wit,  the  genius,  or  the  good  luck 
to  gain,  within  the  last  fortnight,  two  staunch  supporters — 
Girardet's  father-in-law  and  a  very  shrewd  old  merchant  to 
whom  Monsieur  de  Grancey  had  sent  him.  These  two  worthy 
men,  his  self-appointed  spies,  affected  to  be  Albert's  most 
ardent  opponents  in  the  hostile  camp.  Towards  the  end  of 
the  show  of  hands  they  informed  Savarus,  through  the  me- 
dium of  Monsieur  Boucher,  that  thirty  voters,  unknown,  were 
working  against  him  in  his  party,  playing  the  same  trick  that 
they  were  playing  for  his  benefit  on  the  other  side. 

A  criminal  marching  to  execution  could  not  suffer  as  Al- 
bert suffered  as  he  went  home  from  the  hall  where  his  fate  was 
at  stake.  The  despairing  lover  could  endure  no  compan- 
ionship. He  walked  through  the  streets  alone,  between 
eleven  o'clock  and  midnight.  At  one  in  the  morning,  Albert, 
to  whom  sleep  had  been  unknown  for  the  past  three  days,  was 
sitting  in  his  library  in  a  deep  armchair,  his  face  as  pale  as  if 
he  were  dying,  his  hands  hanging  limp,  in  a  forlorn  attitude 
worthy  of  the  Magdalen.  Tears  hung  on  his  long  lashes, 
tears  that  dim  the  eyes,  but  do  not  fall ;  fierce  thought  drinks 
them  up,  the  fire  of  the  soul  consumes  them.  Alone,  he  might 
weep.  And  then,  under  the  kiosk,  he  saw  a  white  figure, 
which  reminded  him  of  Francesca. 

"And  for  three  months  I  have  had  no  letter  from  her! 
What  has  become  of  her  ?  I  have  not  written  for  two  months, 
but  I  warned  her.  Is  she  ill  ?  Oh  my  love !  My  life !  Will 
you  ever  know  what  I  have  gone  through  ?  What  a  wretched 
constitution  is  mine!  Have  I  an  aneurism?"  he  asked  him- 
self, feeling  his  heart  beat  so  violently  that  its  pulses  seemed 
audible  in  the  silence  like  little  grains  of  sand  dropping  on  a 
big  drum. 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  367 

At  this  moment  three  distinct  taps  sounded  on  his  door; 
Albert  hastened  to  open  it,  and  almost  fainted  with  joy  at 
seeing  the  Vicar-General's  cheerful  and  triumphant  mien. 
Without  a  word,  he  threw  his  arms  round  the  Abbe  de  Gran- 
cey,  held  him  fast,  and  clasped  him  closely,  letting  his  head 
fall  on  the  old  man's  shoulder.  He  was  a  child  again;  he 
cried  as  he  had  cried  on  hearing  that  Francesca  Soderini  was 
a  married  woman.  He  betrayed  his  weakness  to  no  one  but 
to  this  priest,  on  whose  face  shone  the  light  of  hope.  The 
priest  had  been  sublime,  and  as  shrewd  as  he  was  sublime. 

"Forgive  me,  dear  Abbe,  but  you  come  at  one  of  those 
moments  when  the  man  vanishes,  for  you  are  not  to  think 
me  vulgarly  ambitious." 

"Oh!  I  know,"  replied  the  Abbe.  "You  wrote  'Ambition 
for  love's  sake!' — Ah!  my  son,  it  was  love  in  despair  that 
made  me  a  priest  in  1786,  at  the  age  of  two-and-twenty.  In 
1788  I  was  in  charge  of  a  parish.  I  know  life. — I  have  re- 
fused three  bishoprics  already ;  I  mean  to  die  at  Besangon." 

"Come  and  see  her!"  cried  Savarus,  seizing  a  candle,  and 
leading  the  Abbe  into  the  handsome  room  where  hung  the 
portrait  of  the  Duchesse  d'Argaiolo,  which  he  lighted  up. 

"She  is  one  of  those  women  who  are  born  to  reign!"  said 
the  Vicar-General,  understanding  how  great  an  affection  Al- 
bert showed  him  by  this  mark  of  confidence.  "But  there  is 
pride  on  that  brow ;  it  is  implacable ;  she  would  never  forgive 
an  insult !  It  is  the  Archangel  Michael,  the  angel  of  execu- 
tion, the  inexorable  angel — 'All  or  nothing'  is  the  motto  of 
this  type  of  angel.  There  is  something  divinely  pitiless  in 
that  head." 

"You  have  guessed  well,"  cried  Savarus.  "But,  my  dear 
Abbe,  for  more  than  twelve  years  now  she  has  reigned  over 
my  life,  and  I  have  not  a  thought  for  which  to  blame  my- 
self  " 

"Ah !  if  you  could  only  say  the  same  of  God !"  said  the 
priest  with  simplicity.  "Now,  to  talk  of  your  affairs.  For 
ten  days  I  have  been  at  work  for  you.  If  you  are  a  real  poli- 
tician, this  time  you  will  follow  my  advice.  You  would  not 


368  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

be  where  you  are  now  if  you  would  have  gone  to  the  Watte- 
villes  when  I  first  told  you.  But  you  must  go  there  to-mor- 
row; I  will  take  you  in  the  evening.  The  Eouxey  estates  are 
in  danger ;  the  case  must  be  defended  within  three  days.  The 
election  will  not  be  over  in  three  days.  They  will  take  good 
care  not  to  appoint  examiners  the  first  day.  There  will  be 
several  voting  days,  and  you  will  be  elected  by  ballot " 

"How  can  that  be  ?"  asked  Savarus. 

"By  winning  the  Kouxey  lawsuit  you  will  gain  eighty 
Legitimist  votes ;  add  them  to  the  thirty  I  can  command,  and 
you  have  a  hundred  and  ten.  Then,  as  twenty  remain  to  you 
of  the  Boucher  committee,  you  will  have  a  hundred  and  thirty 
in  all." 

"Well,"  said  Albert,  "we  must  get  seventy-five  more." 

"Yes,"  said  the  priest,  "since  all  the  rest  are  Ministerial. 
But,  my  son,  you  have  two  hundred  votes,  and  the  Prefectxire 
no  more  than  a  hundred  and  eighty." 

"I  have  two  hundred  votes?"  said  Albert,  standing  stupid 
with  amazement,  after  starting  to  his  feet  as  if  shot  up  by  a 
spring. 

"You  have  those  of  Monsieur  de  Chavoncourt,"  said  the 
Abbe. 

"How?"  said  Albert. 

"You  will  marry  Mademoiselle  Sidonie  de  Chavoncourt." 

"Never !" 

"You  will  marry  Mademoiselle  Sidonie  de  Chavoncourt," 
the  priest  repeated  coldly. 

"But  you  see — she  is  inexorable,"  said  Albert,  pointing  to 
Francesca: 

"You  will  marry  Mademoiselle  Sidonie  de  Chavoncourt," 
said  the  Abbe  calmly  for  the  third  time. 

This  time  Albert  understood.  The  Vicar-General  would 
not  be  implicated  in  the  scheme  which  at  last  smiled  on  the 
despairing  politician.  A  word  more  would  have  compromised 
the  priest's  dignity  and  honor. 

"To-morrow  evening  at  the  Hotel  de  Rupt  you  will  meet 
Madame  de  Chavoncourt  and  her  second  daughter.  You  can 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  369 

thank  her  beforehand  for  what  she  is  going  to  do  for  you, 
and  tell  her  that  your  gratitude  is  unbounded,  that  you  are 
hers  body  and  soul,  that  henceforth  your  future  is  that  of  her 
family.  You  are  quite  disinterested,  for  you  have  so  much 
confidence  in  yourself  that  you  regard  the  nomination  as 
deputy  as  a  sufficient  fortune. 

"You  will  have  a  struggle  with  Madame  de  Chavoncourt; 
she  will  want  you  to  pledge  your  word.  All  your  future  life, 
my  son,  lies  in  that  evening.  But,  understand  clearly,  I  have 
nothing  to  do  with  it.  I  am  answerable  only  for  Legitimist 
voters ;  I  have  secured  Madame  de  Watteville,  and  that  means 
all  the  aristocracy  of  Besangon.  Amedee  de  Soulas  and  Vau- 
chelles,  who  will  both  vote  for  you,  have  won  over  the  young 
men ;  Madame  de  Watteville  will  get  the  old  ones.  As  to  my 
electors,  they  are  infallible." 

"And  who  on  earth  has  gained  over  Madame  de  Chavon- 
court?" asked  Savarus. 

"Ask  me  no  questions,"  replied  the  Abbe.  "Monsieur  de 
Chavoncourt,  who  has  three  daughters  to  marry,  is  not  capable 
of  increasing  his  wealth.  Though  Vauchelles  marries  the 
eldest  without  anything  from  her  father,  because  her  old 
aunt  is  to  settle  something  on  her,  what  is  to  become  of  the 
two  others  ?  Sidonie  is  sixteen,  and  your  ambition  is  as  good 
as  a  gold  mine.  Some  one  has  told  Madame  de  Chavon- 
court that  she  will  do  better  by  getting  her  daughter  married 
than  by  sending  her  husband  to  waste  his  money  in  Paris. 
That  some  one  manages  Madame  de  Chavoncourt,  and 
Madame  de  Chavoncourt  manages  her  husband." 

"That  is  enough,  my  dear  Abbe.  I  understand.  When 
once  I  am  returned  as  deputy,  I  have  somebody's  fortune  to 
make,  and  by  making  it  large  enough  I  shall  be  released 
from  my  promise.  In  me  you  have  a  son,  a  man  who  will 
owe  his  happiness  to  you.  Great  heavens !  what  have  I  done 
to  deserve  so  true  a  friend  ?" 

"You  won  a  triumph  for  the  Chapter,"  said  the  Vicar-Gen- 
eral, smiling.  "Now,  as  to  all  this,  be  as  secret  as  the  tomb. 
We  are  nothing,  we  have  done  nothing.  If  we  were  known 


370  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

to  have  meddled  in  election  matters,  we  should  be  eaten  up 
alive  by  the  Puritans  of  the  Left — who  do  worse — and  blamed 
by  some  of  our  own  party,  who  want  everything.  Madame 
de  Chavoncourt  has  no  suspicion  of  my  share  in  all  this.  I 
have  confided  in  no  one  but  Madame  de  Watteville,  whom  we 
may  trust  as  we  trust  ourselves." 

"I  will  bring  the  Duchess  to  you  to  be  blessed !"  cried  Sa- 
varus. 

After  seeing  out  the  old  priest,  Albert  went  to  bed  in  the 
swaddling  clothes  of  power. 

Next  evening,  as  may  well  be  supposed,  by  nine  o'clock 
Madame  la  Baronne  de  Watteville's  rooms  were  crowded  by 
the  aristocracy  of  Besanc,on  in  convocation  extraordinary. 
They  were  discussing  the  exceptional  step  of  going  to  the  poll, 
to  oblige  the  daughter  of  the  de  Eupts.  It  was  known  that 
the  former  Master  of  Appeals,  the  secretary  of  one  of  the 
most  faithful  ministers  under  the  Elder  Branch,  was  to  be 
presented  that  evening.  Madame  de  Chavoncourt  was  there 
with  her  second  daughter  Sidonie,  exquisitely  dressed,  while 
her  elder  sister,  secure  of  her  lover,  had  not  indulged  in  any 
of  the  arts  of  the  toilet.  In  countr}r  towns  these  little  things 
are  remarked.  The  Abbe  de  Grancey's  fine  and  clever  head 
was  to  be  seen  moving  from  group  to  group,  listening  to  every- 
thing, seeming  to  be  apart  from  it  all,  but  uttering  those  in- 
cisive phrases  which  sum  up  a  question  and  direct  the  issue. 

"If  the  Elder  Branch  were  to  return,"  said  he  to  an  old 
statesman  of  seventy,  "what  politicians  would  they  find?" 
— "Berryer,  alone  on  his  bench,  does  not  know  which  way  to 
turn ;  if  he  had  sixty  votes,  he  would  often  scotch  the  wheels 
of  the  Government  and  upset  Ministries !" — "The  Due  de 
Fitz-James  is  to  be  nominated  at  Toulouse." — "You  will  en- 
able Monsieur  de  Watteville  to  win  his  lawsuit." — "If  you  vote 
for  Monsieur  Savarus,  the  Republicans  will  vote  with  you 
rather  than  with  the  Moderates!"  etc.,  etc. 

At  nine  o'clock  Albert  had  not  arrived.  Madame  de  Watte- 
ville was  disposed  to  regard  such  delay  as  an  impertinence. 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  371 

"My  dear  Baroness,"  said  Madame  de  Chavoncourt,  "do  not 
let  such  serious  issues  turn  on  such  a  trifle.  The  varnish  on 
his  boots  is  not  dry — or  a  consultation,  perhaps,  detains  Mon- 
sieur de  Savarus." 

Eosalie  shot  a  side  glance  at  Madame  de  Chavoncourt. 

"She  is  very  lenient  to  Monsieur  de  Savarus,"  she  whispered 
to  her  mother. 

"You  see,"  said  the  Baroness  with  a  smile,  "there  is  a 
question  of  a  marriage  between  Sidonie  and  Monsieur  de 
Savarus." 

Mademoiselle  de  Watteville  hastily  went  to  a  window  look- 
ing out  over  the  garden. 

At  ten  o'clock  Albert  de  Savarus  had  not  yet  appeared. 
The  storm  that  threatened  now  burst.  Some  of  the  gentle- 
men sat  down  to  cards,  finding  the  thing  intolerable.  The 
Abbe  de  Grancey,  who  did  not  know  what  to  think,  went  to 
the  window  where  Eosalie  was  hidden,  and  exclaimed  aloud 
in  his  amazement,  "He  must  be  dead !" 

The  Vicar-General  stepped  out  into  the  garden,  followed  by 
Monsieur  de  Watteville  and  his  daughter,  and  they  all  three 
went  up  to  the  kiosk.  In  Albert's  rooms  all  was  dark ;  not  a 
light  was  to  be  seen. 

"Jerome!"  cried  Eosalie,  seeing  the  servant  in  the  yard 
below.  The  Abbe  looked  at  her  with  astonishment.  "Where 
in  the  world  is  your  master?"  she  asked  the  man,  who  came 
to  the  foot  of  the  wall. 

"Gone — in  a  post-chaise,  mademoiselle." 

"He  is  ruined !"  exclaimed  the  Abbe  de  Grancey,  "or  he  is 
happy !" 

The  joy  of  triumph  was  not  so  effectually  concealed  on 
Eosalie's  face  that  the  Vicar-General  could  not  detect  it-  He 
affected  to  see  nothing. 

"What  can  this  girl  have  had  to  do  with  this  business  ?"  he 
asked  himself. 

They  all  three  returned  to  the  drawing-room,  where  Mon- 
sieur de  Watteville  announced  the  strange,  the  extraordinary, 
the  prodigious  news  of  the  lawyer's  departure,  without  any 


3W  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

reason  assigned  for  his  evasion.  By  half-past  eleven  only 
fifteen  persons  remained,  among  them  Madame  de  Chavon- 
court  and  the  Abb6  de  Godenars,  another  Vicar-General,  a 
man  of  about  forty,  who  hoped  for  a  bishopric,  the  two  Cha- 
voncourt  girls,  and  Monsieur  de  Vauchelles,  the  Abbe  de 
Grancey,  Rosalie,  Amedee  de  Soulas,  and  a  retired  magistrate, 
one  of  the  most  influential  members  of  the  upper  circle  of 
Besangon,  who  had  been  very  eager  for  Albert's  election.  The 
Abbe  de  Grancey  sat  down  by  the  Baroness  in  such  a  position 
ts  to  watch  Eosalie,  whose  face,  usually  pale,  wore  a  feverish 
flush. 

"What  can  have  happened  to  Monsieur  de  Savarus?"  said 
Madame  de  Chavoncourt. 

At  this  moment  a  servant  in  livery  brought  in  a  letter  for 
the  Abbe  de  Grancey  on  a  silver  tray. 

"Pray  read  it,"  said  the  Baroness. 

The  Vicar-General  read  the  letter ;  he  saw  Rosalie  suddenly 
turn  as  white  as  her  kerchief. 

"She  recognizes  the  writing,"  said  he  to  himself,  after 
glancing  at  the  girl  over  his  spectacles.  He  folded  up  the  let- 
ter, and  calmly  put  it  in  his  pocket  without  a  word.  In  three 
minutes  he  had  met  three  looks  from  Rosalie  which  were 
enough  to  make  him  guess  everything. 

"She  is  in  love  with  Albert  Savarus !"  thought  the  Vicar- 
General. 

He  rose  and  took  leave.  He  was  going  towards  the  door 
when,  in  the  next  room,  he  was  overtaken  by  Rosalie,  who 
said  : 

"Monsieur  de  Grancey,  it  was  from  Albert !" 

"How  do  you  know  that  is  was  his  writing,  to  recognize 
it  from  so  far  ?" 

The  girl's  reply,  caught  as  she  was  in  the  toils  of  her  im- 
patience and  rage,  seemed  to  the  Abbe  sublime. 

"I  love  him  ! — What  is  the  matter  ?"  she  said  after  a  pause. 

"He  gives  up  the  election." 

Rosalie  put  her  finger  to  her  lip. 

"I  ask  you  to  be  as  secret  as  if  it  were  a  confession,"  said 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  373 

she  before  returning  to  the  drawing-room.  "If  there  is  an 
end  of  the  election,  there  is  an  end  of  the  marriage  with 
Sidonie." 

In  the  morning,  on  her  way  to  Mass,  Mademoiselle  de 
Watteville  heard  from  Mariette  some  of  the  circumstances 
which  had  prompted  Albert's  disappearance  at  the  most 
critical  moment  of  his  life. 

"Mademoiselle,  an  old  gentleman  from  Paris  arrived  yes- 
terday morning  at  the  Hotel  National;  he  came  in  his  own 
carriage  with  four  horses,  and  a  courier  in  front,  and  a  ser- 
vant. Indeed,  Jerome,  who  saw  the  carriage  returning,  de- 
clares he  could  only  be  a  prince  or  a  milord." 

"Was  there  a  coronet  on  the  carriage  ?"  asked  Eosalie. 

"I  do  not  know,"  said  Mariette.  "Just  as  two  was  striking 
he  came  to  call  on  Monsieur  Savarus,  and  sent  in  his  card; 
and  when  he  saw  it,  Jerome  says  Monsieur  turned  as  pale  as 
a  sheet,  and  said  he  was  to  be  shown  in.  As  he  himself 
locked  the  door,  it  is  impossible  to  tell  what  the  old  gentle- 
man and  the  lawyer  said  to  each  other;  but  they  were  to- 
gether above  an  hour,  and  then  the  old  gentleman,  with  the 
lawyer,  called  up  his  servant.  Jerome  saw  the  servant  go  out 
again  with  an  immense  package,  four  feet  long,  which  looked 
like  a  great  painting  on  canvas.  The  old  gentleman  had  in 
his  hand  a  large  parcel  of  papers.  Monsieur  Savaron  was 
paler  than  death,  and  he,  so  proud,  so  dignified,  was  in  a 
state  to  be  pitied.  But  he  treated  the  old  gentleman  so  re- 
spectfully that  he  could  not  have  been  politer  to  the  King 
himself.  Jerome  and  Monsieur  Albert  Savaron  escorted  the 
gentleman  to  his  carriage,  which  was  standing  with  the  horses 
in.  The  courier  started  on  the  stroke  of  three. 

"Monsieur  Savaron  went  straight  to  the  Prefecture,  and 
from  that  to  Monsieur  Gentillet,  who  sold  him  the  old  travel- 
ing carriage  that  used  to  belong  to  Madame  de  Saint-Vier  be- 
fore she  died ;  then  he  ordered  post  horses  for  six  o'clock.  He 
went  home  to  pack ;  no  doubt  he  wrote  a  lot  of  letters ;  finally, 
he  settled  everything  with  Monsieur  Girardet,  who  went  to 

VOL. 10-    25 


S74  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

him  and  stayed  till  seven.  Jerome  carried  a  note  to  Monsieur 
Boucher,  with  whom  his  master  was  to  have  dined ;  and  then, 
at  half-past  seven,  the  lawyer  set  out,  leaving  Jerome  with 
three  months'  wages,  and  telling  him  to  find  another  place. 

"He  left  his  keys  with  Monsieur  Girardet,  whom  he  took 
home,  and  at  his  house,  Jerome  says,  he  took  a  plate  of  soup, 
for  at  half-past  seven  Monsieur  Girardet  had  not  yet  dined. 
When  Monsieur  Savaron  got  into  the  carriage  again  he  looked 
like  death.  Jerome,  who,  of  course,  saw  his  master  off,  heard 
him  tell  the  postilion  'The  Geneva  Road !'  ': 

"Did  Jerome  ask  the  name  of  the  stranger  at  the  Hotel 
National  ?" 

"As  the  old  gentleman  did  not  mean  to  stay,  he  was  not 
asked  for  it.  The  servant,  by  his  orders  no  doubt,  pretended 
not  to  speak  French." 

"And  the  letter  which  came  so  late  to  Abbe  de  Gran- 
cey  ?"  said  Eosalie. 

"It  was  Monsieur  Girardet,  no  doubt,  who  ought  to  have 
delivered  it;  but  Jerome  says  that  poor  Monsieur  Girardet, 
who  was  much  attached  to  lawyer  Savaron,  was  as  much  upset 
as  he  was.  So  he  who  came  so  mysteriously,  as  Mademoiselle 
Galard  says,  is  gone  away  just  as  mysteriously." 

After  hearing  this  narraj  ve,  Mademoiselle  de  Watteville 
fell  into  a  brooding  and  absent  mood,  which  everybody  could 
see.  It  is  useless  to  say  anything  of  the  commotion  that  arose 
in  Besangon  on  the  disappearance  of  Monsieur  Savaron.  It 
was  understood  that  the  Prefect  had  obliged  him  with  the 
greatest  readiness  by  giving  him  at  once  a  passport  across  the 
frontier,  for  he  was  thus  quit  of  his  only  opponent.  Next  day 
Monsieur  de  Chavoncourt  was  carried  to  the  top  by  a  majority 
of  a  hundred  and  forty  votes. 

"Jack  is  gone  by  the  way  he  came,"  said  an  elector  on  hear- 
ing of  Albert  Savaron's  flight. 

This  event  lent  weight  to  the  prevailing  prejudice  at  Be- 
sangon against  strangers;  indeed,  two  years  previously  they 
had  received  confirmation  from  the  affair  of  the  Republican 
newspaper.  Ten  days  later  Albert  de  Savarus  was  never 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  375 

spoken  of  again.  Only  three  persons — Girardet  the  attorney, 
the  Vicar-General,  and  Eosalie — were  seriously  affected  by  his 
disappearance.  Girardet  knew  that  the  white-haired  stranger 
was  Prince  Soderini,  for  he  had  seen  his  card,  and  he  told  the 
Vicar-General;  but  Eosalie,  better  informed  than  either  of 
them,  had  known  for  three  months  past  that  the  Due 
d'Argaiolo  was  dead. 

In  the  month  of  April  1836  no  one  had  had  any  news 
from  or  of  Albert  de  Savarus.  Jerome  and  Mariette  were  to  be 
married,  but  the  Baroness  confidentially  desired  her  maid  to 
wait  till  her  daughter  was  married,  saying  that  the  two  wed- 
dings might  take  place  at  the  same  time. 

"It  is  time  that  Eosalie  should  be  married,"  said  the 
Baroness  one  day  to  Monsieur  de  Watteville.  "She  is  nineteen, 
and  she  is  fearfully  altered  in  these  last  months." 

"I  do  not  know  what  ails  her,"  said  the  Baron. 

"When  fathers  do  not  know  what  ails  their  daughters, 
mothers  can  guess,"  said  the  Baroness ;  "we  must  get  her  mar- 
ried." 

"I  am  quite  willing,"  said  the  Baron.  "I  shall  give  her  les 
Eouxey  now  that  the  Court  has  settled  our  quarrel  with  the 
authorities  of  Eiceys  by  fixing  the  boundary  line  at  three  hun- 
dred feet  up  the  side  of  the  Dent  de  Vilard.  I  am  having  a 
trench  made  to  collect  all  the  water  and  carry  it  into  the  lake. 
The  village  did  not  appeal,  so  the  decision  is  final." 

"It  has  never  yet  occurred  to  you,"  said  Madame  de  Watte- 
ville, "that  this  decision  cost  me  thirty  thousand  francs  handed 
over  to  Chantonnit.  That  peasant  would  take  nothing  else ;  he 
sold  us  peace. — If  you  give  away  les  Eouxey,  you  will  have 
nothing  left,"  said  the  Baroness. 

"I  do  not  need  much,"  said  the  Baron ;  "I  am  breaking  up." 

"You  eat  like  an  ogre !" 

"Just  so.  But  however  much  I  may  eat,  I  feel  my  legs 
"get  weaker  and  weaker " 

"It  is  from  working  the  lathe,"  said  his  wife. 

"I  do  not  know,"  said  he. 

"We  will  marry  Eosalie  to  Monsieur  de  Soulas ;  if  you  give 


376  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

her  les  Rouxey,  keep  the  life  interest.  I  will  give  them  fifteen 
thousand  francs  a  year  in  the  funds.  Our  children  can  live 
here ;  I  do  not  see  that  they  are  much  to  be  pitied." 

"No.  I  shall  give  them  les  Rouxey  out  and  out.  Rosalie 
is  fond  of  les  Rouxey." 

"You  are  a  queer  man  with  your  daughter!  It  does  not 
occur  to  you  to  ask  me  if  I  am  fond  of  les  Rouxey." 

Rosalie,  at  once  sent  for,  was  informed  that  she  was  to 
marry  Monsieur  de  Soulas  one  day  early  in  the  month  of 
May. 

"I  am  very  much  obliged  to  you,  mother,  and  to  you  too, 
father,  for  having  thought  of  settling  me ;  but  I  do  not  mean 
to  marry;  I  am  very  happy  with  you." 

"Mere  speeches !"  said  the  Baroness.  "You  are  not  in  love 
with  Monsieur  de  Soulas,  that  is  all." 

"If  you  insist  on  the  plain  truth,  I  will  never  marry  Mon- 
sieur de  Soulas " 

"Oh !  the  never  of  a  girl  of  nineteen !"  retorted  her  mother, 
with  a  bitter  smile. 

"The  never  of  Mademoiselle  de  Watteville,"  said  Rosalie 
with  firm  decision.  "My  father,  I  imagine,  has  no  intention 
of  making  me  marry  against  my  wishes?" 

"No,  indeed  no  !"  said  the  poor  Baron,  looking  affectionately 
at  his  daughter. 

"Very  well !"  said  the  Baroness,  sternly  controlling  the 
rage  of  a  bigot  startled  at  finding  herself  unexpectedly  defied, 
"you  yourself,  Monsieur  de  Watteville,  may  take  the  responsi- 
bility of  settling  your  daughter.  Consider  well,  mademoiselle, 
for  if  you  do  not  marry  to  my  mind  you  will  get  nothing  out 
of  me!" 

The  quarrel  thus  begun  between  Madame  de  Watteville 
and  her  husband,  who  took  his  daughter's  part,  went  so  far 
that  Rosalie  and  her  father  were  obliged  to  spend  the  summer 
at  les  Rouxey;  life  at  the  Hotel  de  Rupt  was  unendurable. 
It  thus  became  known  in  Besanc,on  that  Mademoiselle  de 
Watteville  had  positively  refused  the  Comte  de  Soulas. 

After  their  marriage  Mardette  and  Jerome  came  to  les 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  377 

Eouxey  to  succeed  to  Modinier  in  due  time.  The  Baron  re- 
stored and  repaired  the  house  to  suit  his  daughter's  taste. 
When  she  heard  that  these  improvements  had  cost  about 
sixty  thousand  francs,,  and  that  Eosalie  and  her  father  were 
building  a  conservatory,  the  Baroness  understood  that  there 
was  a  leaven  of  spite  in  her  daughter.  The  Baron  purchased 
various  outlying  plots,  and  a  little  estate  worth  thirty  thou- 
sand francs.  Madame  de  Watteville  was  told  that,  away  from 
her,  Eosalie  showed  masterly  qualities,  that  she  was  taking 
steps  to  improve  the  value  of  les  Eouxey,  that  she  had  treated 
herself  to  a  riding  habit  and  rode  about;  her  father,  whom 
she  made  very  happy,  who  no  longer  complained  of  his  health, 
and  who  was  growing  fat,  accompanied  her  in  her  expedi- 
tions. As  the  Baroness'  name-day  drew  near — her  name 
was  Louise — the  Vicar-General  came  one  day  to  les  Eouxey, 
deputed,  no  doubt,  by  Madame  de  Watteville  and  Monsieur 
de  Soulas,  to  negotiate  a  peace  between  mother  and  daughter. 

"That  little  Eosalie  has  a  head  on  her  shoulders,"  said  the 
folk  of  Besangon. 

After  handsomely  paying  up  the  ninety  thousand  francs 
spent  on  les  Eouxey,  the  Baroness  allowed  her  husband  a  thou- 
sand francs  a  month  to  live  on ;  she  would  not  put  herself  in 
the  wrong.  The  father  and  daughter  were  perfectly  willing  to 
return  to  Besangon  for  the  15th  of  August,  and  to  remain 
there  till  the  end  of  the  month.' 

When,  after  dinner,  the  Vicar-General  took  Mademoiselle 
de  Watteville  apart,  to  open  the  question  of  the  marriage,  by 
explaining  to  her  that  it  was  vain  to  think  any  more  of  Al- 
bert, of  whom  they  had  had  no  news  for  a  year  past,  he  was 
stopped  at  once  by  a  sign  from  Eosalie.  The  strange  girl 
took  Monsieur  de  Grancey  by  the  arm,  and  led  him  to  a  seat 
under  a  clump  of  rhododendrons,  whence  there  was  a  view  of 
the  lake. 

"Listen,  dear  Abbe,"  said  she.  "You  whom  I  love  as  much 
as  rny  father,  for  you  had  an  affection  for  my  Albert,  I  must 
at  last  confess  that  I  committed  crimes  to  become  his  wife, 
and  he  must  be  my  husband. — Here;  read  this." 


378  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

She  held  out  to  him  a  number  of  the  Gazette  which  she  had 
in  her  apron  pocket,  pointing  out  the  following  paragraph 
under  the  date  of  Florence,  May  25th : — 

"The  wedding  of  Monsieur  le  Due  de  Rhetore,  eldest  son 
of  the  Due  de  Chaulieu,  the  former  Ambassador,  to  Madame 
la  Duchesse  d'Argaiolo,  nee  Princess  Soderini,  was  solemnized 
with  great  splendor.  Numerous  entertainments  given  in 
honor  of  the  marriage  are  making  Florence  gay.  The 
Duchess'  fortune  is  one  of  the  finest  in  Italy,  for  the  late 
Duke  left  her  everything." 

"The  woman  he  loved  is  married,"  said  she.  "I  divided 
them." 

"You  ?     How  ?"  asked  the  Abbe. 

Rosalie  was  about  to  reply,  when  she  was  interrupted  by  a 
loud  cry  from  two  of  the  gardeners,  following  on  the  sound  of  a 
body  falling  into  the  water ;  she  started,  and  ran  off  screaming, 
"Oh  !  father !" — The  Baron  had  disappeared. 

In  trying  to  reach  a  piece  of  granite  on  which  he  fancied 
he  saw  the  impression  of  a  shell,  a  circumstance  which  would 
have  contradicted  some  system  of  geology,  Monsieur  de  Watte- 
ville  had  gone  down  the  slope,  lost  his  balance,  and  slipped 
into  the  lake,  which,  of  course,  was  deepest  close  under  the 
roadway.  The  men  had  the  greatest  difficulty  in  enabling 
the  Baron  to  catch  hold  of  a  pole  pushed  down  at  the  place 
where  the  water  was  bubbling,  but  at  last  they  pulled  him  out, 
covered  with  mud,  in  which  he  had  sunk;  he  was  getting 
deeper  and  deeper  in,  by  dint  of  struggling.  Monsieur  deWatte- 
ville  had  dined  heavily,  digestion  was  in  progress,  and  was 
thus  checked. 

When  he  had  been  undressed,  washed,  and  put  to  bed,  he 
was  in  such  evident  danger  that  two  servants  at  once  set  out  on 
horseback :  one  to  ride  to  Besangon,  and  the  other  to  fetch  the 
nearest  doctor  and  surgeon.  When  Madame  de  Watteville 
arrived,  eight  hours  later,  with  the  first  medical  aid  from  Be- 
sanc.on,  they  found  Monsieur  de  Watteville  past  all  hope,  in 
spite  of  the  intelligent  treatment  of  the  Rouxey  doctor.  The 
fright  had  produced  serious  effusion  on  the  brain,  and  the 
shock  to  the  digestion  was  helping  to  kill  the  poor  man. 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  379 

This  death,  which  would  never  have  happened,  said  Madame 
de  Watteville,  if  her  husband  had  stayed  at  Besangon,  was 
ascribed  by  her  to  her  daughter's  obstinacy.  She  took  an  aver- 
sion for  Rosalie,  abandoning  herself  to  grief  and  regrets  that 
were  evidently  exaggerated.  She  spoke  of  the  Baron  as  "her 
dear  lamb !" 

The  last  of  the  Wattevilles  was  buried  on  an  island  in  the 
lake  at  les  Eouxey,  where  the  Baroness  had  a  little  Gothic 
monument  erected  of  white  marble,  like  that  called  the  tomb 
of  Helo'ise  at  Pere-Lachaise. 

A  month  after  this  catastrophe  the  mother  and  daughter 
had  settled  in  the  Hotel  de  Eupt,  where  they  lived  in  savage 
silence.  Eosalie  was  suffering  from  real  sorrow,  which  had  no 
visible  outlet;  she  accused  herself  of  her  father's  death,  and 
she  feared  another  disaster,  much  greater  in  her  eyes,  and  very 
certainly  her  own  work ;  neither  Girardet  the  attorney  nor  the 
Abbe  de  Grancey  could  obtain  any  information  concerning 
Albert.  This  silence  was  appalling.  In  a  paroxysm  of  re- 
pentance she  felt  that  she  must  confess  to  the  Vicar-General 
the  horrible  machinations  by  which  she  had  separated  Fran- 
cesca  and  Albert.  They  had  been  simple,  but  formidable. 
Mademoiselle  de  Watteville  had  intercepted  Albert's  letters  to 
the  Duchess  as  well  as  that  in  which  Francesca  announced  her 
husband's  illness,  warning  her  lover  that  she  could  write  to 
him  no  more  during  the  time  while  she  was  devoted,  as  was  her 
duty,  to  the  care  of  the  dying  man.  Thus,  while  Albert  was 
wholly  occupied  with  election  matters,  the  Duchess  had  writ- 
ten him  only  two  letters;  one  in  which  she  told  him  that  the 
Due  d'Argaiolo  was  in  danger,  and  one  announcing  her  wid- 
owhood— two  noble  and  beautiful  letters,  which  Eosalie  kept 
back. 

After  several  nights'  labor  she  succeeded  in  imitating  Al- 
bert's writing  very  perfectly.  She  had  substituted  three  let- 
ters of  her  own  writing  for  three  of  Albert's,  and  the  rough 
copies  which  she  showed  to  the  old  priest  made  him  shudder — 
the  genius  of  evil  was  revealed  in  them  to  such  perfection. 
Rosalie,  writing  in  Albert's  name,  had  prepared  the  Duchess 


380  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

for  a  change  in  the  Frenchman's  feelings,  falsely  representing 
him  as  faithless,  and  she  had  answered  the  news  of  the  Due 
d'Argaiolo's  death  by  announcing  the  marriage  ere  long  of 
Albert  and  Mademoiselle  de  Watteville.  The  two  letters,  in- 
tended to  cross  on  the  road,  had,  in  fact,  done  so.  The  in- 
fernal cleverness  with  which  the  letters  were  written  so  much 
astonished  the  Vicar-General  that  he  read  them  a  second  time. 
Francesca,  stabbed  to  the  heart  by  a  girl  who  wanted  to  kill 
love  in  her  rival,  had  answered  the  last  in  these  four  words : 
"You  are  free.  Farewell." 

"Purely  moral  crimes,  which  give  no  hold  to  human  justice, 
are  the  most  atrocious  and  detestable,"  said  the  Abbe  severely. 
"God  often  punishes  them  on  earth ;  herein  lies  the  reason  of 
the  terrible  catastrophes  which  to  us  seem  inexplicable.  Of 
all  secret  crimes  buried  in  the  mystery  of  private  life,  the  most 
disgraceful  is  that  of  breaking  the  seal  of  a  letter,  or  of  read- 
ing it  surreptitiously.  Every  one,  whoever  it  may  be,  and 
urged  by  whatever  reason,  who  is  guilty  of  such  an  act  has 
stained  his  honor  beyond  retrieving. 

"Do  you  not  feel  all  that  is  touching,  that  is  heavenly  in  the 
story  of  the  youthful  page,  falsely  accused,  and  carrying  the 
letter  containing  the  order  for  his  execution,  who  sets  out 
without  a  thought  of  ill,  and  whom  Providence  protects  and 
saves — miraculously,  we  say !  But  do  you  know  wherein  the 
miracle  lies  ?  Virtue  has  a  glory  as  potent  as  that  of  innocent 
childhood. 

"I  say  these  things  not  meaning  to  admonish  you,"  said 
the  old  priest,  with  deep  grief.  "I,  alas !  am  not  your  spirit- 
ual director;  you  are  not  kneeling  at  the  feet  of  God;  I  am 
your  friend,  appalled  by  dread  of  what  your  punishment  may 
be.  What  has  become  of  that  unhappy  Albert  ?  Has  he,  per- 
haps, killed  himself?  There  was  tremendous  passion  under 
his  assumption  of  calm.  I  understand  now  that  old  Prince 
Soderini,  the  father  of  the  Duchess  d'Argaiolo,  came  here  to 
take  back  his  daughter's  letters  and  portraits.  This  was  the 
thunderbolt  that  fell  on  Albert's  head,  and  he  went  off,  no 
doubt,  to  try  to  justify  himself.  But  how  is  it  that  in  fourteen 
months  he  has  given  us  no  news  of  himself  ?" 


ALBERT  SAVARTTS  381 

"Oh !  if  I  marry  him,  he  will  be  so  happy !" 

"Happy? — He  does  not  love  you.  Besides,  you  have  no 
great  fortune  to  give  him.  Your  mother  detests  you;  you 
made  her  a  fierce  reply  which  rankles,  and  which  will  be  your 
ruin.  When  she  told  you  yesterday  that  obedience  was  the 
only  way  to  repair  your  errors,  and  reminded  you  of  the  need 
for  marrying,  mentioning  Amedee — 'If  you  are  so  fond  of 
him,  marry  him  yourself,  mother !' — Did  you,  or  did  you  not, 
fling  these  words  in  her  tee-h  ?" 

"Yes,"  said  Eosalie. 

"Well,  I  know  her,"  Monsieur  de  Grancey  went  on.  "In  a 
few  months  she  will  be  Comtesse  de  Soulas !  She  will  be  sure 
to  have  children ;  she  will  give  Monsieur  de  Soulas  forty  thou- 
sand francs  a  year;  she  will  benefit  him  in  other  ways,  and 
reduce  your  share  of  her  fortune  as  much  as  possible.  You 
will  be  poor  as  long  as  she  lives,  and  she  is  but  eight-and- 
thirty !  Your  whole  estate  will  be  the  land  of  les  Rouxey,  and 
the  small  share  left  to  you  after  your  father's  legal  debts  are 
settled,  if,  indeed,  your  mother  should  consent  to  forego  her 
claims  on  les  Rouxey.  From  the  point  of  view  of  material 
advantages,  you  have  done  badly  for  yourself ;  from  the  point 
of  view  of  feeling,  I  imagine  you  have  wrecked  your  life.  In- 
stead of  going  to  your  mother "  Rosalie  shook  her  head 

fiercely. 

"To  your  mother,"  the  priest  went  on,  "and  to  religion, 
where  you  would,  at  the  first  impulse  of  your  heart,  have 
found  enlightenment,  counsel,  and  guidance,  you  chose  to  act 
in  your  own  way,  knowing  nothing  of  life,  and  listening  only 
to  passion !" 

These  words  of  wisdom  terrified  Mademoiselle  de  Watte- 
ville. 

"And  what  ought  I  to  do  now  ?"  she  asked  after  a  pause. 

"To  repair  your  wrong-doing,  you  must  ascertain  its  ex- 
lent,"  said  the  Abbe. 

"Well,  I  will  write  to  the  only  man  who  can  know  any- 
thing of  Albert's  fate,  Monsieur  Leopold  Hannequin,  a  notary 
in  Paris,  his  friend  from  childhood." 


382  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

"Write  no  more,  unless  to  do  honor  to  truth,"  said  the 
Vicar-General.  "Place  the  real  and  the  false  letters  in  my 
hands,  confess  everything  in  detail  as  though  I  were  the 
keeper  of  your  conscience,  asking  me  how  you  may  expiate 
your  sins,  and  doing  as  I  bid  you.  I  shall  see — for,  above  all 
things,  restore  this  unfortunate  man  to  his  innocence  in  the 
eyes  of  the  woman  he  had  made  his  divinity  on  earth.  Though 
he  has  lost  his  happiness,  Albert  must  still  hope  for  justifica- 
tion/' 

Eosalie  promised  to  obey  the  Abbe,  hoping  that  the  steps 
he  might  take  would  perhaps  end  in  bringing  Albert  back  to 
her. 

Not  long  after  Mademoiselle  de  Watteville's  confession  a 
clerk  came  to  Besangon  from  Monsieur  Leopold  Hannequin, 
armed  with  a  power  of  attorney  from  Albert;  he  called  first 
on  Monsieur  Girardet,  begging  his  assistance  in  selling  the 
house  belonging  to  Monsieur  Savaron.  The  attorney  under- 
took to  do  this  out  of  friendship  for  Albert.  The  clerk  from 
Paris  sold  the  furniture,  and  with  the  proceeds  could  repay 
some  money  owed  by  Savaron  to  Girardet,  who  on  the  occasion 
of  his  inexplicable  departure  had  lent  him  five  thousand  francs 
while  undertaking  to  collect  his  assets.  When  Girardet  asked 
what  had  become  of  the  handsome  and  noble  pleader,  to  whom 
he  had  been  much  attached,  the  clerk  replied  that  no  one  knew 
but  his  master,  and  that  the  notary  had  seemed  greatly  dis- 
tressed by  the  contents  of  the  last  letter  he  had  received  from 
Monsieur  Albert  de  Savarus. 

On  hearing  this,  the  Vicar-General  wrote  to  Leopold.  This 
was  the  worthy  notary's  reply : — 

"To  Monsieur  1'Abbe  de  Grancey, 

Vicar-General  of  the  Diocese  of  Besangon. 

"  PAKB. 

"Alas,  monsieur,  it  is  in  nobody's  power  to  restore  Albert  to 
the  life  of  the  world ;  he  has  renounced  it.  He  is  a  novice  in 
the  monastery  of  the  Grande  Chartreuse  near  Grenoble.  You 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  38? 

know,  better  than  I  who  have  but  just  learned  it,  that  on  the 
threshold  of  that  cloister  everything  dies.  Albert,  foreseeing 
that  I  should  go  to  him,  placed  the  General  of  the  Order  be- 
tween my  utmost  efforts  and  himself.  I  know  his  noble  soul 
well  enough  to  be  sure  that  he  is  the  victim  of  some  odious 
plot  unknown  to  us;  but  everything  is  at  an  end.  The 
Duchesse  d'Argaiolo,  now  Duchesse  de  Rhetore,  seems  to  me  to 
have  carried  severity  to  an  extreme.  At  Belgirate,  which  she 
had  left  when  Albert  flew  thither,  she  had  left  instructions 
leading  him  to  believe  that  she  was  living  in  London.  From 
London  Albert  went  in  search  of  her  to  Naples,  and  from 
Naples  to  Rome,  where  she  was  now  engaged  to  the  Due  de 
Rhetore.  When  Albert  succeeded  in  seeing  Madame  d'Ar- 
gaiolo, at  Florence,  it  was  at  the  ceremony  of  her  marriage. 

"Our  poor  friend  swooned  in  church,  and  even  when  he  was 
in  danger  of  death  he  could  never  obtain  any  explanation 
from  this  woman,  who  must  have  had  I  know  not  what  in  her 
heart.  For  seven  months  Albert  had  traveled  in  pursuit  of  a 
cruel  creature  who  thought  it  sport  to  escape  him;  he  knew 
not  where  or  how  to  catch  her. 

"I  saw  him  on  his  way  through  Paris ;  and  if  you  had  seen 
him,  as  I  did,  you  would  have  felt  that  not  a  word  might  be 
spoken  about  the  Duchess,  at  the  risk  of  bringing  on  an  attack 
which  might  have  wrecked  his  reason.  If  he  had  known  what 
his  crime  was,  he  might  have  found  means  to  justify  himself ; 
but  being  falsely  accused  of  being  married ! — what  could  he 
do  ?  Albert  is  dead,  quite  dead  to  the  world.  He  longed  for 
rest ;  let  us  hope  that  the  deep  silence  and  prayer  into  which 
he  has  thrown  himself  may  give  him  happiness  in  another 
guise.  You,  monsieur,  who  have  known  him,  must  greatly 
pity  him ;  and  pity  his  friends  also. 

"Yours,  etc." 

As  soon  as  he  received  this  letter  the  good  Vicar-General 
wrote  to  the  General  of  the  Carthusian  order,  and  this  was 
the  letter  he  received  from  Albert  Savarus : — 


884  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

"Brother  Albert  to  Monsieur  1'Abbe  de  Grancey,  Vicar-Gen- 
eral of  the  Diocese  of  Besangon. 

"  LA  GRANDE  CHARTREUSE. 

"I  recognized  your  tender  soul,  dear  and  well-beloved  Vicar- 
General,  and  your  still  youthful  heart,  in  all  that  the  reverend 
Father  General  of  our  Order  has  just  told  me.  You  have  un- 
derstood the  only  wish  that  lurks  in  the  depths  of  my  heart  so 
far  as  the  things  of  the  world  are  concerned — to  get  justice 
done  to  my  feelings  by  her  who  has  treated  me  so  badly !  But 
before  leaving  me  at  liberty  to  avail  myself  of  your  offer,  the 
General  wanted  to  know  that  my  vocation  was  sincere ;  he  was 
so  kind  as  to  tell  me  his  idea,  on  rinding  that  I  was  determined 
to  preserve  absolute  silence  on  this  point.  If  I  had  yielded 
to  the  temptation  to  rehabilitate  the  man  of  the  world,  the 
friar  would  have  been  rejected  by  this  monastery.  Grace  has 
certainly  done  her  work;  but,  though  short,  the  struggle  was 
not  the  less  keen  or  the  less  painful.  Is  not  this  enough 
to  show  you  that  I  could  never  return  to  the  world  ? 

"Hence  my  forgiveness,  which  you  ask  for  the  author  of  so 
much  woe,  is  entire  and  without  a  thought  of  vindictiveness. 
I  will  pray  to  God  to  forgive  that  young  lady  as  I  forgive  her, 
and  as  I  shall  beseech  Him  to  give  Madame  de  Ehetore  a  life 
of  happiness.  Ah  !  whether  it  be  death,  or  the  obstinate  hand 
of  a  young  girl  madly  bent  on  being  loved,  or  one  of  the  blows 
ascribed  to  chance,  must  we  not  all  obey  God?  Sorrow  in 
some  souls  makes  a  vast  void  through  which  the  Divine  Voice 
rings.  I  learned  too  late  the  bearings  of  this  life  on  that 
which  awaits  us ;  all  in  me  is  worn  out ;  I  could  not  serve  in 
the  ranks  of  the  Church  Militant,  and  I  lay  the  remains  of  an 
almost  extinct  life  at  the  foot  of  the  altar. 

"This  is  the  last  time  I  shall  ever  write.  You  alone,  who 
loved  me,  and  whom  I  loved  so  well,  could  make  me  break 
the  law  of  oblivion  I  imposed  on  myself  when  I  entered  these 
headquarters  of  Saint  Bruno,  but  you  are  always  especially 
named  in  the  prayers  of 

"BROTHER  ALBERT. 

"November  1836." 


ALBEET  SAVARUS  885 

"Everything  is  for  the  best  perhaps/'  thought  the  Abbe  de 
Grancey. 

When  he  showed  this  letter  to  Eosalie,  who,  with  a  pious 
impulse,  kissed  the  lines  which  contained  her  forgiveness,  he 
said  to  her : 

"Well,  now  that  he  is  lost  to  you,  will  you  not  be  reconciled 
to  your  mother  and  marry  the  Comte  de  Soulas  ?" 

"Only  if  Albert  should  order  it/'  said  she. 

"But  you  see  it  is  impossible  to  consult  him.  The  General 
of  the  Order  would  not  allow  it." 

"If  I  were  to  go  to  see  him  ?" 

"No  Carthusian  sees  any  visitor.  Besides,  no  woman  but 
the  Queen  of  France  may  enter  a  Carthusian  monastery," 
said  the  Abbe.  "So  you  have  no  longer  any  excuse  for  not 
marrying  young  Monsieur  de  Soulas." 

"I  do  not  wish  to  destroy  my  mother's  happiness/'  retorted 
Rosalie. 

"Satan  !"  exclaimed  the  Vicar-General. 

Towards  the  end  of  that  winter  the  worthy  Abbe"  de  Grancey 
died.  This  good  friend  no  longer  stood  between  Madame 
de  Watteville  and  her  daughter,  to  soften  the  impact  of  those 
two  iron  wills. 

The  event  he  had  foretold  took  place.  In  the  month  of 
August  1837  Madame  de  Watteville  was  married  to  Monsieur 
de  Soulas  in  Paris,  whither  she  went  by  Eosalie's  advice,  the 
girl  making  a  show  of  kindness  and  sweetness  to  her  mother. 
Madame  de  Watteville  believed  in  this  affection  on  the  part  of 
her  daughter,  who  simply  desired  to  go  to  Paris  to  give  her- 
self the  luxury  of  a  bitter  revenge;  she  thought  of  nothing 
but  avenging  Savarus  by  torturing  her  rival. 

Mademoiselle  de  Watteville  had  been  declared  legally  of 
age;  she  was,  in  fact,  not  far  from  one-and-twenty.  Her 
mother,  to  settle  with  her  finally,  had  resigned  her  claims  on 
les  Rouxey,  and  the  daughter  had  signed  a  release  for  all  the 
inheritance  of  the  Baron  de  Watteville.  Rosalie  encouraged 
her  mother  to  marry  the  Comte  de  Soulas  and  settle  all  her 
own  fortune' on  him. 


386  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

"Let  us  each  be  perfectly  free,"  she  said. 

Madame  de  Soulas,  who  had  been  uneasy  as  to  her  daugh- 
ter's intentions,  was  touched  by  this  liberality,  and  made  her 
a  present  of  six  thousand  francs  a  year  in  the  funds  as  con- 
science money.  As  the  Comtesse  de  Soulas  had  an  income 
of  forty-eight  thousand  francs  from  her  own  lands,  and  was 
quite  incapable  of  alienating  them  in  order  to  diminish 
Eosalie's  share,  Mademoiselle  de  Watteville  was  still  a  fortune 
to  marry,  of  eighteen  hundred  thousand  francs;  les  Eouxey, 
with  the  Baron's  additions,  and  certain  improvements,  might 
yield  twenty  thousand  francs  a  year,  besides  the  value  of  the 
house,  rents,  and  preserves.  So  Eosalie  and  her  mother,  who 
soon  adopted  the  Paris  style  and  fashions,  easily  obtained  in- 
troductions to  the  best  society.  The  golden  key — eighteen 
hundred  thousand  francs — embroidered  on  Mademoiselle  de 
Watteville's  stomacher,  did  more  for  the  Comtesse  de  Soulas 
than  her  pretensions  a  la  de  Eupt,  her  inappropriate  pride,  or 
even  her  rather  distant  great  connections. 

In  the  month  of  February  1838  Eosalie,  who  was  eagerly 
courted  by  many  young  men,  achieved  the  purpose  which  had 
brought  her  to  Paris.  This  was  to  meet  the  Duchesse  de 
Ehetore,  to  see  this  wonderful  woman,  and  to  overwhelm  her 
with  perennial  remorse.  Eosalie  gave  herself  up  to  the  most 
bewildering  elegance  and  vanities  in  order  to  face  the  Duchess 
on  an  equal  footing. 

They  first  met  at  a  ball  given  annually  after  1830  for  the 
benefit  of  the  pensioners  on  the  old  Civil  List.  A  young  man, 
prompted  by  Eosalie,  pointed  her  out  to  the  Duchess,  saying : 

"There  is  a  very  remarkable  young  person,  a  strong-minded 
young  lady  too !  She  drove  a  clever  man  into  a  monastery — 
the  Grande  Chartreuse — a  man  of  immense  capabilities,  Al- 
bert de  Savarus,  whose  career  she  wrecked.  She  is  Made- 
moiselle de  Watteville,  the  famous  Besanc/m  heiress — 

The  Duchess  turned  pale.  Eosalie's  eyes  met  hers  with  one 
of  those  flashes  which,  between  woman  and  woman,  are  more 
fatal  than  the  pistol  shots  of  a  duel.  Francesca  Soderini. 
who  had  suspected  that  Albert  might  be  innocent,  hastily 


ALBERT  SAVARUS  387 

quitted  the  ballroom,  leaving  the  speaker  at  his  wits'  end  to 
guess  what  terrible  blow  he  had  inflicted  on  the  beautiful 
Duchesse  de  Ehetore. 

"If  you  want  to  hear  more  about  Albert,  come  to  the  Opera 
ball  on  Tuesday  with  a  marigold  in  your  hand." 

This  anonymous  note,  sent  by  Eosalie  to  the  Duchess, 
brought  the  unhappy  Italian  to  the  ball,  where  Mademoiselle 
de  Watteville  placed  in  her  hand  all  Albert's  letters,  with  that 
written  to  Leopold  Hannequin  by  the  Vicar-General,  and  the 
notary's  reply,  and  even  that  in  which  she  had  written  her  own 
confession  to  the  Abbe  de  Grancey. 

"I  do  not  choose  to  be  the  only  sufferer,"  she  said  to  her 
rival,  "for  one  has  been  as  ruthless  as  the  other." 

After  enjoying  the  dismay  stamped  on  the  Duchess'  beau- 
tiful face,  Eosalie  went  away ;  she  went  out  no  more,  and  re- 
turned to  Besangon  with  her  mother. 

Mademoiselle  de  Watteville,  who  lived  alone  on  her  estate 
of  les  Eouxey,  riding,  hunting,  refusing  two  or  three  offers 
a  year,  going  to  Besangon  four  or  five  times  in  the  course  of 
the  winter,  and  busying  herself  with  improving  her  land,  was 
regarded  as  a  very  eccentric  personage.  She  was  one  of  the 
celebrities  of  the  Eastern  provinces. 

Madame  de  Soulas  has  two  children,  a  boy  and  a  girl,  and 
she  has  grown  younger;  but  young  Monsieur  de  Soulas  has 
aged  a  good  deal. 

"My  fortune  has  cost  me  dear,"  said  he  to  young  Chavon- 
court.  "Eeally  to  know  a  bigot  it  is  unfortunately  necessary 
to  marry  her!" 

Mademoiselle  de  Watteville  behaves  in  the  most  extraor- 
dinary manner.  "She  has  vagaries,"  people  say.  Every 
year  she  goes  to  gaze  at  the  walls  of  the  Grande  Chartreuse. 
Perhaps  she  dreams  of  imitating  her  grand-uncle  by  forcing 
the  walls  of  the  monastery  to  find  ;i  husband,  as  Watteville 
broke  through  those  of  his  monastery  to  recover  his  liberty. 

She  left  Besangon  in  1841,  intending,  it  was  said,  to  get 


388  ALBERT  SAVARUS 

married;  but  the  real  reason  of  this  expedition  is  still  un- 
known, for  she  returned  home  in  a  state  which  forbids  her 
ever  appearing  in  society  again.  By  one  of  those  chances 
of  which  the  Abbe  de  Grancey  had  spoken,  she  happened  to 
be  on  the  Loire  in  a  steamboat  of  which  the  boiler  burst. 
Mademoiselle  de  Watteville  was  so  severely  injured  that  she 
lost  her  right  arm  and  her  left  leg;  her  face  is  marked  with 
fearful  scars,  which  have  bereft  her  of  her  beauty ;  her  health, 
cruelly  upset,  leaves  her  few  days  free  from  suffering.  In 
short,  she  now  never  leaves  the  Chartreuse  of  les  Eouxey, 
where  she  leads  a  life  wholly  devoted  to  religious  practices. 

PABIB,  .May  1842. 


THE  PEASANTRY 


INTRODUCTION 

FEW,  I  suppose,  of  the  readers  of  Les  Paysans  in  more  recent 
years  have  read  it  without  a  more  or  less  distinct  mental 
comparison  with  the  corresponding  book  in  the  Rougon- 
Macquart  series.  And  I  should  hope  that  this  comparative 
process  has  had,  in  the  best  minds,  only  one  result.  Les 
Paysans  (which,  by  the  way,  is  a  very  late  book,  partly  post- 
humous, and  is  said,  though  not  on  positive  authority,  to 
have  enjoyed  the  collaboration  of  Madame  de  Balzac)  is  not 
one  of  Balzac's  best ;  but  it  is  as  far  above  La  Terre  from 
every  conceivable  point  of  view,  except  that  of  Holywell 
Street,  as  a  play  of  Shakespeare  is  above  one  of  Monk  Lewis. 
The  comparison,  indeed,  exhibits  something  more  than  the 
difference  of  genius  in  Balzac  and  in  M.  Zola.  It  illustrates 
the  difference  of  their  methods.  We  know  how  not  merely  the 
Eougon-Macquart  series  in  general,  but  La  Terre  in  par- 
ticular, was  composed.  M.  Zola,  who  is  a  conscientious  man, 
went  down  to  a  village  (somewhere  in  the  Beauce,  if  I  recol- 
lect rightly),  stayed  some  time,  made  his  notes,  and  came 
back  to  Paris.  There  is  nothing  like  the  same  great  gulf 
fixed  between  the  Londoner  and  the  countryman  in  England 
as  that  which  exists  between  the  Parisian  and  the  Pro- 
vincial in  France.  But  imagine  an  Englishman,  not  even 
English  by  race,  from  his  youth  up  an  inhabitant  of  great 
towns,  attempting  to  delineate  the  English  peasantry  after 
a  few  weeks'  stay  in  a  Wiltshire  village  1 

(fc) 


Jt  INTRODUCTION 

Balzac,  on  the  other  hand,  a  Frenchman  of  Frenchmen, 
was  born  in  a  French  country  town,  was  brought  up  in  the 
country,  and,  what  is  more,  was  in  the  constant  habit  of  re- 
tiring to  out-of-the-way  country  inns  and  similar  places  to 
work.  He  had  the  key,  to  begin  with;  and  he  never  let  it 
get  rusty.  To  some  tastes  and  judgments  his  country 
sketches,  if  less  lively,  are  more  veracious  even  than  his 
Parisian  ones;  they  have  less  convention  about  them;  they 
are  less  obviously  under  the  dominion  of  prepossessions  and 
crotchets,  less  elaborately  calculated  to  form  backgrounds 
and  scenery  for  the  evolutions  of  Rastignacs  and  Rubempres. 

The  result  is,  in  Les  Paysans,  a  book  of  extraordinary 
interest  and  value.  In  one  respect,  indeed,  it  falls  short  of 
the  highest  kind  of  novel.  There  is  no  character  in  whose 
fortunes  or  in  whose  development  we  take  the  keenest  in- 
terest. Blondet  is  little  more  than  an  intelligent  chorus  or 
reporter,  though  he  does  not  tell  the  story;  Montcornet  is 
a  good-natured  "old  silly;"  the  Countess  is — a  Countess. 
Not  one  of  the  minor  characters,  not  even  Rigou,  is  very 
much  more  than  a  sketch.  But  then  there  is  such  a  multi- 
tude of  these  sketches,  and  they  are  all  instinct  with  such  life 
and  vigor !  Although  Balzac  has  used  no  illegitimate  attrac- 
tions— think  only  of  the  kind  of  stuff  with  which  M.  Zola, 
like  a  child  smearing  color  on  a  book-engraving,  would  have 
daubed  the  grisly  outlines  of  the  Tonsard  family! — he  has 
not  shrunk  from  what  even  our  modern  realists,  I  suppose, 
would  allow  to  be  "candor ;"  and  his  book  is  as  masterly  as 
it  is  crushing  in  its  indictment  against  the  peasant. 

Is  the  indictment  as  true  as  it  is  severe  and  well  urged? 
I  am  rather  afraid  that  we  have  not  much  farther  to  look 
than  at  certain  parts  of  more  than  one  of  the  Three  Kingdoms 


INTRODUCTION  Xl 

to  see  that  we  need  not  even  limit  ourselves  to  the  French 
peasant  in  admitting  that  it  is.  There  are  passages  in  the 
book  which  read  as  if  they  might  be  extracts  mutatis  mu- 
tandis from  a  novel  on  the  Irish  Land  League  or  the  Welsh 
Anti-Tithe  Agitation.  To  a  certain  extent,  no  doubt,  the 
English  peasant,  at  least  when  he  is  not  Celtic,  is  rather  less 
bitten  with  actual  "land-hunger"  than  the  Frenchman;  and 
even  when  he  is  a  Celt,  it  does  not  seem  to  be  so  much  land- 
hunger  proper  as  a  dislike  to  adopting  any  other  occupation 
which  drives  him  to  crime.  Moreover,  Free  Trade  and  other 
things  have  made  land  in  the  United  Kingdom  very  much  less 
an  object  of  positive  greed  than  it  was  in  France  eighty  years 
ago,  or,  indeed,  than  it  is  there  still.  Yet  the  main  and 
special  ingredients  of  a  land  agitation — the  ruthless  disregard 
of  life,  the  indifference  to  all  considerations  of  gratitude  or 
justice,  the  secret-society  alliance  against  the  upper  classes, — 
all  these  things  are  delineated  here  with  an  almost  terrifying 
veracity. 

For  individual  and  separate  sketches  of  scenes  and  char- 
acters (with  the  limitation  above  expressed)  the  book  may 
vie  almost  with  the  best.  The  partly  real,  partly  fictitious, 
otter-hunting  of  the  old  scoundrel  Fourchon  is  quite  first- 
rate;  and  it  is  of  a  kind  rarely  found  in  French  writers  till 
a  time  much  more  modern  than  Balzac's.  The  machinations 
of  Gaubertin,  Sibilet,  and  Rigou  are  a  little  less  vivid;  but 
the  latter  is  a  masterly  character  of  the  second  class,  and 
perhaps  the  best  type  in  fiction  of  the  intelligent  sensualist 
of  the  lower  rank — of  the  man  hard-headed,  harder-hearted, 
and  entirely  destitute  of  any  merit  but  shrewdness.  The 
character  of  Bonnebault  is  a  little,  a  very  little,  the- 
atrical ;  the  troupier  franQais  debauched,  but  not  ungenerous, 


rll  INTRODUCTION 

appears  a  little  too  much  in  his  cartoon  manner.  (CLa, 
Pechina"  wants  fuller  working  out ;  but  she  affords  one  of  the 
most  interesting  touches  of  the  comparison  above  suggested 
in  the  scene  between  her,  Nicolas,  and  Catherine.  One  turns 
a  little  squeamish  at  the  mere  thought  of  what  M.  Zola  would 
have  made  of  it  in  the  effort  to  make  clear  to  the  lowest  ap- 
prehension what  Balzac,  almost  without  offence,  has  made 
clear  to  all  but  the  very  lowest.  Michaud  is  good  and  not  over- 
done; and  of  his  enemies  the  Tonsards — enough  has  been 
said.  They  could  not  be  better  in  their  effectiveness;  and, 
I  am  afraid,  they  could  not  be  much  better  in  their  truth. 
Here,  at  least,  if  the  moral  picture  is  grimy  enough,  Balzac 
cannot,  I  think,  be  charged  with  having  exaggerated  it,  while 
he  cannot  be  denied  the  credit  of  having  presented  it  in  ex- 
traordinarily forcible  and  brilliant  colors  and  outlines. 

Les  Paysans,  owing  to  the  lateness  of  its  appearance,  was 
less  pulled  about  than  almost  any  other  of  its  author's  books. 
It,  or  rather  the  first  part  of  it,  appeared  under  the  title 
Qui  Terre  a  guerre  a  in  the  Presse  for  December  1844.  Xoth- 
ing  more  appeared  during  the  author's  life;  but  in  1855  the 
Revue  de  Paris  reprinted  the  previous  portion,  and  finished 
the  book,  and  the  whole  was  published  in  four  volumes  by 
de  Potter  in  the  same  year. 

G.  S. 


THE  PEASANTRY 

To  M.  P.-S.-B.  Oavault. 

"I  have  seen  the  manners  of  my  time,  and  I  publish  these 
letters,"  wrote  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau  at  the  beginning  of  his 
"Nouvelle  Helo'ise;"  can  I  not  imitate  that  great  writer  and  tell 
you  that  "I  am  studying  the  tendencies  of  my  epoch,  and  I  pub- 
lish this  work?" 

So  long  as  society  inclines  to  exalt  philanthropy  into  a  principle 
instead  of  regarding  it  as  an  accessory,  this  Study  will  be  terribly 
true  to  life.  Its  object  is  to  set  in  relief  the  principal  types  of  a 
class  neglected  by  the  throng  of  writers  in  quest  of  new  subjects. 
This  neglect,  it  may  be,  is  simple  prudence  in  days  when  the 
working  classes  have  fallen  heirs  to  the  courtiers  and  flatterers 
of  kings,  when  the  criminal  is  the  hero  of  romance,  the  heads- 
man is  sentimentally  interesting,  and  we  behold  something  like 
an  apotheosis  of  the  proletariat.  Sects  have  arisen  among  us, 
every  pen  among  them  swells  the  chorus  of  "Workers,  arise!" 
even  as  once  the  Third  Estate  was  bidden  to  "Arise!"  It  is 
pretty  plain  that  no  Herostratus  among  them  has  had  the 
courage  to  go  forth  into  remote  country  districts  to  study  the 
phenomena  of  a  permanent  conspiracy  of  those  whom  we  call 
"the  weak"  against  those  who  imagine  themselves  to  be  "the 
strong" — of  the  Peasantry  against  the  Rich.  All  that  can  be  done 
is  to  open  the  eyes  of  the  legislator,  not  of  to-day,  but  of  to- 
morrow. In  the  midst  of  an  attack  of  democratic  vertigo  to 
which  so  many  blind  scribes  have  fallen  victims,  is  it  not  impera- 
tively necessary  that  some  one  should  paint  the  portrait  of  this 
who  stultifies  the  Code  by  reducing  the  ownership  of 


2  THE  PEASANTRY 

land  to  a  something  that  at  once  is  ami  is  not?  Here  you  shall 
see  this  indefatigable  sapper  at  his  work,  nibbling  and  gnawing 
the  land  into  little  bits,  carving  an  acre  into  a  hundred  scraps, 
to  be  in  turn  divided,  summoned  to  the  banquet  by  the  bourgeois, 
who  finds  in  him  a  victim  and  ally.  Here  is  a  social  dis- 
solvent, created  by  the  Revolution,  that  will  end  by  swallowing 
up  the  bourgeoisie,  which  in  its  day,  devoured  the  old  noblesse. 
Here  is  a  Robespierre,  with  a  single  head  and  twenty  million 
hands,  whose  very  insignificance  and  obscurity  has  put  him  out 
of  the  reach  of  the  law;  a  Robespierre  always  at  his  work, 
crouching  in  every  commune,  enthroned  in  town  council  cham- 
bers and  bearing  arms  in  the  National  Guard  in  every  district 
in  France,  for  in  the  year  1830  France  forgot  that  Napoleon  pre- 
ferred to  run  the  risks  of  his  misfortunes  to  the  alternative  of 
arming  the  masses. 

If  during  the  past  eight  years  I  have  a  hundred  times  taken 
up  and  laid  down  the  most  considerable  piece  of  work  which  I 
have  undertaken,  my  friends,  as  you  yourself,  will  understand 
that  courage  may  well  falter  before  such  difficulties,  and  the 
mass  of  details  essential  to  the  development  of  a  drama  so 
cruelly  bloodthirsty,  but  among  the  many  reasons  which  induce 
something  like  temerity  in  me,  count  as  one  my  desire  to  com- 
plete a  work  destined  as  a  token  of  deep  and  lasting  gratitude 
for  a  devotion  which  was  one  of  my  greatest  consolations  in  mis- 
fortune. DE  BALZAC. 


THE  PEASANTRY 


BOOK  I 

He  that  hath  the  Land 
Must  fight  for  his  own  Hand. 


THE  CHATEAU 

To  M.  Nathan. 

"THE  AIGTTES, 
"August  6.  1823. 

"Now,  my  dear  Nathan,  purveyor  of  dreams  to  the  public, 
I  will  set  you  dreaming  of  the  actual,  and  you  shall  tell  me 
if  ever  this  century  of  ours  can  leave  a  legacy  of  such  dreams 
to  the  Nathans  and  the  Blondets  of  1923.  You  shall  measure 
the  distance  we  have  traveled  since  the  time  when  the  Florines 
of  the  eighteenth  century  awoke  to  find  such  a  chateau  as  the 
Aigues  in  their  contract. 

"When  you  get  my  letter  in  the  morning,  dear  friend  of 
mine,  from  your  bed  will  you  see,  fifty  leagues  away  from 
Paris,  by  the  side  of  the  highroad  on  the  confines  of  Bur- 
gundy, a  pair  of  red  brick  lodges  separated  or  united  by  a 
green-painted  barrier?  There  the  coach  deposited  your 
friend. 

"A  quick-set  hedge  winds  away  on  either  side  of  the  lodge 
gates;  with  trails  of  bramble  like  stray  hairs  escaping  from 
it,  and  here  and  there  an  upstart  sapling.  Wild  flowers  grow 
along  the  top  of  the  bank  above  the  ditch  bathed  at  their  roots 
by  the  stagnant  green  water.  To  right  and  left  the  hedges 
extend  as  far  as  the  coppice  which  skirts  a  double  meadow,  a 
bit  of  cleared  forest  no  doubt. 


4  THE  PEASANTRY 

"From  the  dusty  deserted  lodges  at  the  gates  there  stretches 
a  magnificent  avenue  of  elm-trees,  a  century  old ;  the  spread- 
ing tops  meet  in  a  majestic  green  arched  roof  overhead,  and 
the  road  below  is  so  overgrown  with  grass  that  .you  can 
scarcely  see  the  ruts.  The  old-world  look  of  the  gate,  the  ven- 
erable elm-trees,  the  breadth  of  the  alleys  on  either  side  which 
cross  the  avenue,  prepare  you  to  expect  an  almost  royal 
chateau.  Before  reaching  the  lodge  I  had  had  a  look  at  the 
valley  of  the  Aigues  from  the  top  of  one  of  the  slopes  which 
we  in  France  have  the  vanity  to  call  a  hill,  just  above  the 
village  of  Conches,  where  we  changed  horses  for  the  last  stage. 
At  the  end  the  highroad  makes  a  detour  to  pass  through  the 
little  sub-prefecture  of  Ville-aux-Fayes,  where  a  nephew  of 
our  friend  Lupeaulx  lords  it  over  the  rural  population.  The 
higher  slopes  of  the  broad  ridges  above  the  river  are  crowned 
by  the  forest  which  stretches  along  the  horizon  line,  and  the 
whole  picture  is  framed  in  the  setting  of  the  far-off  hills  of 
the  Morvan — that  miniature  Switzerland.  All  this  dense 
forest  lies  in  three  hands.  It  belongs  partly  to  the  Aigues, 
partly  to  the  Marquis  de  Eonquerolles,  partly  to  the  Comte 
de  Soulanges,  whose  country  houses,  parks,  and  villages,  seen 
far  down  below  in  the  valley,  seem  to  be  a  realization  of 
'Velvet'  Breughel  landscape  fancies. 

"If  these  details  do  not  put  you  in  mind  of  all  the  castles 
in  Spain  which  you  have  longed  to  possess  in  France,  this 
wonder-struck  Parisian's  traveler's  tale  is  clean  thrown  away 
upon  you.  Briefly,  I  have  delighted  in  a  country  where  nature 
and  art  blend  without  spoiling  each  other,  for  nature  here  is 
an  artist,  and  art  looks  like  nature.  I  have  found  the  oasis 
of  which  we  have  dreamed  so  often  after  reading  certain 
romances;  exuberant  wildness  subordinated  to  an  effect,  na- 
ture left  to  herself  without  confusion,  and  even  with  a  sug- 
gestion of  the  wilderness,  neglect,  mystery ;  a  certain  character 
of  its  own.  Over  the  barrier  with  you,  and  on  we  go. 

"When  with  curious  eyes  I  tried  to  look  down  the  whole 
length  of  the  avenue,  which  the  sun  only  penetrates  at  sunrise 
and  sunset,  drawing  zebra  markings  of  shadow  across  it  when 


THE  PEASANTRY  3 

the  light  is  low,  my  view  was  cut  short  by  the  outline  of  a  bit 
of  rising  ground.  The  avenue  makes  a  detour  to  avoid  it, 
and  when  you  have  turned  the  corner,  the  long  row  of  trees 
is  interrupted  again  by  a  little  wood ;  you  enter  a  square  with 
a  stone  obelisk  standing  erect  in  the  midst  like  an  eternal  note 
of  admiration.  Purple  or  yellow  flowers  (according  to  the 
time  of  year)  droop  from  the  courses  of  the  masonry,  and 
the  monolith  itself  is  surmounted  (what  a  notion!)  by  a 
spiked  ball.  Clearly  it  was  a  woman  who  designed  the  Aigues, 
a  man  does  not  have  such  coquettish  fancies.  The  architect 
acted  upon  instructions. 

"Beyond  the  little  wood,  posted  there  like  a  sentinel,  I  came 
out  into  a  delicious  dip  of  the  land,  and  crossed  a  foaming 
stream  by  a  single  span  stone  bridge  covered  with  mosses  of 
glorious  hues,  the  daintiest  of  time's  mosaics.  Then  the  ave- 
nue ascends  a  gentle  slope  above  the  course  of  the  stream,  and 
in  the  distance  you  see  the  first  set  picture — a  mill  with  its 
weir  and  causeway  nestled  among  green  trees.  There  was 
the  thatched  roof  of  the  miller's  house,  the  ducks  and  drying 
linen,  the  nets  and  tackle,  and  well-boat,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  miller's  lad,  who  had  been  gazing  at  me  before  I  set  eyes 
on  him.  Wherever  you  may  be  in  the  country,  sure  though 
you  feel  that  you  are  quite  alone,  you  are  the  cynosure  of 
some  pair  of  eyes  under  a  cotton  night-cap.  Some  laborer 
drops  his  hoe  to  look  at  you,  some  vine-dresser  straightens 
his  bent  back,  some  little  maid  leaves  her  goats,  or  cows,  or 
sheep,  and  scrambles  up  a  willow  tree  to  watch  your  move- 
ments. 

"Before  long  the  elm  avenue  becomes  an  alley,  shaded  by 
acacias,  which  brings  you  to  a  gate  belonging  to  the.  period 
when  wrought  iron  was  twisted  into  aerial  filigree  work,  not 
unlike  a  writing-master's  specimen  flourishes;  this  Avenue 
gate,  as  it  is  called,  reveals  the  taste  of  the  Grand  Dauphin 
who  built  it ;  and  if  the  golden  arabesques  are  somewhat  red- 
dened now  by  the  rust  beneath,  it  seemed  to  me  to  be  none 
the  less  picturesque  on  that  account.  On  either  side  it  is 
flanked  by  a  porter's  lodge,  after  the  manner  of  the  palace 


6  THE  PEASANTRY 

at  Versailles,  each  surmounted  by  a  colossal  urn.  A  ha-ha 
fence,  bristling  with  spikes  most  formidable  to  behold,  ex- 
tends for  some,  distance  on  either  side,  and  when  the  ha-ha 
ends  a  rough  unplastered  wall  begins,  a  wall  of  motley-colored 
stones  of  the  strangest  conceivable  shapes,  embedded  in  red- 
dish-colored mortar,  the  warm  yellow  of  the  flints  blending 
with  the  white  chalk  and  red-brown  gritstone. 

"At  first  sight  the  park  looks  sombre,  for  the  walls  are 
hidden  by  climbing  plants,  and  the  trees  have  not  heard  the 
sound  of  an  axe  for  fifty  years.  You  might  think  that  it  had 
become  virgin  forest  again  by  some  strange  miracle  known 
to  woods  alone.  The  plants  that  cling  about  the  tree-trunks 
have  bound  them  together.  Glistening  mistletoe-berries 
hang  from  every  fork  in  the  branches  where  the  rain-water 
can  lie.  There  I  have  found  giant  ivy-stems,  and  such 
growths  as  can  only  exist  at  a  distance  of  fifty  leagues  from 
Paris,  where  land  is  not  too  dear  to  afford  them  ample  room. 
It  takes  a  good  many  square  miles  to  make  such  a  landscape 
as  this.  There  is  no  sort  of  trimness  about  it,  no  sign  of  the 
garden  rake.  The  ruts  are  full  of  water,  where  the  frogs 
increase  and  multiply,  and  the  tadpoles  abide  in  peace;  deli- 
cate forest  flowers  grow  there,  the  heather  is  as  fine  as  any 
that  I  have  seen  by  the  hearth  in  January  in  Florine's  elabo- 
rate flower-stand.  The  mystery  of  the  place  mounts  to  your 
brain  and  stirs  vague  longings.  The  scent  of  the  forest  is 
adored  by  all  lovers  of  poetry,  for  all  things  in  it — the  most 
harmless  mosses,  the  deadliest  lurking  growths,  damp  earth, 
water-willows,  and  balm  and  wild  thyme,  and  the  yellow  stars 
of  the  water-lilies,  all  the  teeming  vigorous  growth  of  the 
forest  yields  itself  to  me  in  the  breath  of  the  forest,  and 
brings  me  the  thought  of  them  all,  perhaps  the  soul  of  them 
all.  I  fell  to  thinking  of  a  rose-colored  dress  flitting  along 
the  winding  alley. 

"It  ended  abruptly  at  last  in  a  little  wood  full  of  tremulous 
birches  and  poplars  and  their  quivering  kind,  sensitive  to  the 
wind,  slender-stemmed,  graceful  of  growth,  the  trees  of  free 
love.  And  then,  my  dear  fellow,  I  saw  a  sheet  of  water  cov- 


THE  PEASANTRY  T 

ered  with  pond-lilies,  and  a  light  nutshell  of  a  boat,  painted 
black  and  white,  dainty  as  a  Seine  waterman's  craft,  lying 
rotting  among  the  leaves  of  the  water-plants,  broad  and 
spreading,  or  delicate  and  fine. 

"Beyond  the  water  rises  the  chateau,  which  bears  the  date 
1560.  It  is  a  red  brick  building  with  stone  facings,  and 
string  courses  and  angles  all  of  stone.  The  casements  (oh! 
Versailles)  still  keep  their  tiny  square  window  panes.  The 
stone  of  the  string  courses  is  cut  into  pyramids  alternately 
raised  and  depressed,  as  on  the  Eenaissance  front  of  the 
Ducal  Palace.  The  chateau  is  a  straggling  building,  with 
the  exception  of  the  main  body,  which  is  approached  by  an 
imposing  double  stone  staircase  ascending  in  parallel  lines 
and  turning  halfway  up  at  right  angles.  The  round  balusters 
are  flattened  at  the  thickest  part,  and  taper  towards  the  bot- 
tom. To  this  main  body  various  turrets  have  been  added, 
covered  with  lead  in  floral  designs,  and  modern  wings  with 
balconies  and  urns  more  or  less  in  the  Grecian  style.  There 
is  no  symmetry  about  it,  my  dear  fellow.  The  buildings  are 
dotted  down  quite  promiscuously — nests  sheltered,  as  it  were, 
by  a  few  trees.  Their  leafage  scatters  countless  brown  needles 
over  the  roof,  a  deposit  of  soil  for  the  moss  to  grow  in,  filling 
the  great  rifts,  which  attract  the  eyes,  with  plant  life.  Here 
there  is  stone-pine,  with  rusty  red  bark  and  umbrella-shaped 
top,  there  a  cedar  a  couple  of  centuries  old,  a  spruce-fir,  or 
weeping-willows,  or  an  oak-tree  rising  above  these,  and  (in 
front  of  the  principal  turret)  the 'most  outlandish-looking 
shrubs,  clipped  yews  to  set  you  thinking  of  some  old  French 
pleasance  long  since  swept  away,  and  hortensias  and  mag- 
nolias at  their  feet ;  in  fact,  it  is  a  sort  of  horticultural  pen- 
sioner's hospital,  where  trees  that  have  had  their  day  linger 
on,  forgotten  like  other  heroes. 

"A  quaintly-carved  chimney  at  the  house  angle,  puffing  out 
volumes  of  smoke,  assured  me  that  this  charming  view  was 
no  scene  on  the  stage.  If  there  was  a  kitchen,  human  beings 
lived  there.  Can  you  imagine  me,  Blondet,  the  Parisian  who 
thinks  he  has  come  to  the  Arctic  regions  when  he  finds  himself 


8  THE  PEASANTRY 

at  Saint-Cloud,  set  down  in  the  midst  of  that  torrid  zone  of 
Burgundian  landscape?  The  sun  beats  down  in  scorching 
rays,  the  kingfisher  keeps  to  the  brink  of  the  pool,  the  cicadas 
chirp,  the  grasshoppers  cry,  the  seed-vessels  of  some  plant 
crack  here  and  there,  the  poppies  distil  their  opiate  in  thick 
tears,  everything  stands  out  sharp  and  clear  against  the  dark- 
blue  sky.  Joyous  fumes  of  Nature's  punch  mount  up  from 
the  reddish  earth  on  the  garden  terraces ;  insects  and  flowers 
are  drunk  with  the  vapor  that  burns  our  faces  and  scorches 
our  eyes.  The  grapes  are  rounding,  the  vines  wearing  a  net- 
work of  pale  threads  so  fine  that  it  puts  laceworkers  to  the 
blush;  and  (a  final  touch)  all  along  the  terrace,  in  front  of 
the  house,  blaze  the  blue  larkspurs,  nasturtiums  the  color  of 
flame,  and  sweet-peas.  The  scent  of  tuberose  and  orange 
blossoms  comes  from  a  distance.  The  forest  fragrance  which 
stirred  my  imagination  prepared  me  for  the  pungent  per- 
fumes burning  in  this  flower-seraglio. 

"Then,  at  the  head  of  the  stone  staircase,  imagine  a  woman 
like  a  queen  of  flowers,  a  woman  dressed  in  white,  holding 
a  sunshade  lined  with  white  silk  above  her  bare  head,  a  woman 
whiter  than  the  silk,  whiter  than  the  lilies  at  her  feet,  or  the 
starry  jessamine  thrusting  itself  up  boldly  through  the  balus- 
trade before  her;  a  Frenchwoman  born  in  Eussia,  who  says, 
'I  had  quite  given  you  up !'  She  had  seen  me  ever  since  the 
turning  in  the  path.  How  perfectly  any  woman,  even  the 
simplest  of  her  sex,  understands  and  adapts  herself  to  a 
situation.  The  servants  were  busy  preparing  breakfast,  evi- 
dently delayed  till  the  diligence  should  arrive.  She  had  not 
ventured  to  come  to  meet  me. 

"What  is  this  but  our  dream?  the  dream  of  all  lovers  of 
Beauty  in  its  many  forms — beauty  as  of  seraphs  in  a  Luini's 
Marriage  of  the  Virgin  at  Sarono,  beauty  that  a  Rubens  dis- 
covers in  the  press  of  the  fight  in  his  Battle  of  Thermodon, 
beauty  that  five  centuries  have  elaborated  in  the  cathedrals 
of  Milan  and  Seville,  beauty  of  Saracen  Granada,  beauty  of 
a  Louis  Quatorze's  Versailles,  beauty  of  the  Alps — beauty  of 
La  Limagne? 


THE  PEASANTRY  9 

"Here  there  is  nothing  overmuch  of  prince  or  financier, 
but  prince  of  the  blood  and  farmer-general  have  dwelt  at  the 
Aigues,  or  it  would  not  include  two  thousand  acres  of  wood- 
land, a  park  nine  hundred  acres  in  extent,  the  mill,  three  little 
holdings,  a  large  farm  at  Conches,  and  the  vineyards  belong- 
ing to  the  estate,  which  must  bring  in  seventy-two  thousand 
francs  every  year.  Such  is  the  Aigues,  dear  boy,  whither  I 
have  come  on  an  invitation  of  two  years'  standing,  and  here 
I  write  at  this  moment  in  the  Blue  Chamber — the  room  kept 
for  intimate  friends  of  the  house. 

"At  the  high  end  of  the  park  there  are  a  dozen  springs 
of  clear  and  limpid  water  from  the  Morvan,  flowing  in 
liquid  ribbons  down  through  the  park  in  the  valley,  and 
through  the  magnificent  gardens  to  pour  into  the  pool.  These 
have  given  the  Aigues  its  name ;  Jjes  Aigues- Vives,  the  living 
water,  it  used  to  be  on  old  title-deeds,  in  contradistinction  to 
Les  Aigues-Mortes,  the  dead  water,  but  Vives  has  been  sup- 
pressed. The  pool  empties  itself  into  the  little  river  that 
crosses  the  avenue,  through  a  narrow,  willow-fringed  channel. 
The  effect  of  the  channel  thus  decked  is  charming.  As  you 
glide  along  it  in  a  boat,  you  might  fancy  yourself  in  the  nave 
of  some  vast  cathedral,  with  the  main  body  of  the  house  at  the 
further  end  of  the  channel  to  represent  the  choir;  and  if  the 
sunset  sheds  its  orange  hues,  barred  with  shadow,  across  the 
front  of  the  chateau  and  lights  up  the  panes,  it  seems  to  you 
that  you  see  the  fiery  stained-glass  windows.  At  the  end  of 
the  channel  you  see  Blangy,  the  principal  village  in  the 
commune,  which  boasts  some  sixty  houses  and  a  country 
church ;  or,  strictly  speaking,  this  is  simply  an  ordinary  house 
in  shocking  repair,  and  distinguished  from  the  rest  by  a 
wooden  steeple  roofed  with  broken  tiles.  A  decent  private 
house  and  a  parsonage  are  likewise  distinguishable. 

"The  commune  is,  for  all  that,  a  fairly  large  one.  There 
are  some  two  hundred  scattered  hearths  in  it,  besides  those 
in  the  little  market  town  itself.  There  are  fruit-trees  along 
the  wayside,  and  the  land  is  cut  up  here  and  there  into  gar- 
dens, regular  laborers'  gardens,  where  everything  is  crowded 


10  THE  PEASANTRY 

into  a  little  space,,  flowers,  and  onions,  and  cabbages,  and 
vines,  and  gooseberry-bushes,  and  a  great  many  dung-heaps. 
The  village  itself  has  an  unsophisticated  air;  it  looks  rustic, 
with  that  very  tidy  simplicity  which  painters  prize  so  highly. 
And  further  away,  quite  in  the  distance,  you  see  the  little 
town  of  Soulanges  on  the  edge  of  a  large  sheet  of  water,  like 
an  imitation  Lake  of  Thun. 

"When  you  walk  here  in  the  park,  with  its  four  gates  each 
in  the  grand  style,  you  find  your  Arcadia  of  mythology  grow 
flat  as  Beauce.  The  real  Arcadia  is  in  Burgundy,  and  not 
in  Greece;  Arcadia  is  the  Aigues,  and  nowhere  elsfe.  The 
little  streams  have  united  to  make  the  river  that  winds  along 
the  lowest  grounds  of  the  park,  hence  the  cool  stillness  peculiar 
to  it,  and  the  appearance  of  loneliness  that  puts  you  in  mind 
of  the  Chartreuse,  an  idea  carried  out  by  a  hermitage  on  an 
island  contrived  in  the  midst ;  without,  it  looks  like  a  ruin  in 
good  earnest ;  within,  its  elegance  is  worthy  of  the  taste  of  the 
sybarite-financier  who  planned  it. 

"The  Aigues,  my  dear  fellow,  once  belonged  to  that  Bouret 
who  spent  two  millions  on  a  single  occasion  when  Louis  XV. 
came  here.  How  many  stormy  passions,  distinguished  intel- 
lects, and  lucky  circumstances  have  combined  to  make  this 
beautiful  place  what  it  is.  One  of  Henri  IV. 's  mistresses 
rebuilt  the  present  chateau,  and  added  the  forest  to  the  estate. 
Then  the  chateau  was  given  to  Mile.  Choin,  a  favorite  of  the 
Grand  Dauphin,  and  she  too  enlarged  the  Aigues  by  several 
farms.  Bouret  fitted  up  the  house  with  all  the  refinements 
of  luxury  to  be  found  in  the  snug  Parisian  paradises  of 
operatic  celebrities.  It  was  Bouret,  too,  who  restored  the 
ground-floor  rooms  in  the  style  of  Louis  XV. 

"The  dining-hall  struck  me  dumb  with  wonder.  Your  eyes 
are  attracted  first  to  the  fantastic  arabesques  of  the  ceiling, 
which  is  covered  with  frescoes  in  the  Italian  manner.  Stucco 
women  terminating  in  leafage  bear  baskets  of  fruit,  from 
which  the  foliage  of  the  ceiling  springs.  On  the  wall  spaces 
between  the  figures  some  unknown  artists  painted  wonderful 
designs,  all  the  glories  of  the  table ;  salmon,  and  boars'  heads, 


THE  PEASANTRY  11 

and  shell-fish,  and  every  edible  thing  that  by  any  strange 
freak  of  resemblance  can  recall  the  human  form — man,  wo- 
man, or  child;  for  whimsicality  of  invention  the  designer 
might  rival  the  Chinese,  who,  to  my  thinking,  best  under- 
stand decorative  art.  A  spring  is  set  under  the  table  in  the 
floor  by  the  chair  of  the  mistress  of  the  house,  so  that  she 
may  touch  the  bell  with  her  foot  to  summon  the  servants 
without  interrupting  the  conversation  or  disturbing  her  pose. 
Paintings  of  voluptuous  scenes  are  set  above  the  doors.  All 
the  embrasures  are  of  marble  mosaic,  and  the  hall  is  warmed 
from  beneath.  From  every  window  there  is  a  delicious  view. 

"The  dining-hall  communicates  with  a  bathroom  on  the 
one  hand,  and  a  boudoir  on  the  other.  The  bathroom  is  lined 
with  Sevres  tiles,  painted  in  monochrome,  after  Boucher's 
designs;  the  floor  is  paved  with  mosaic;  the  bath  itself  with 
marble.  In  an  alcove,  screened  by  a  painting  on  copper, 
raised  by  means  of  pulleys  and  a  counterpoise,  there  is  a  couch 
of  gilded  wood  in  the  very  height  of  the  Pompadour  style. 
The  lapis  blue  ceiling  is  spangled  with  golden  stars.  In  this 
way  the  bath,  the  table,  and  the  loves  are  brought  together. 

"Beyond  the  salon,  in  all  the  glory  of  the  style  of  Louis 
XIV.,  is  the  splendid  billiard-room.  I  do  not  know  that  it 
has  its  match  in  Paris.  At  the  further  end  of  the  semi- 
circular entrance-hall,  the  finest  and  daintiest  of  staircases, 
lighted  from  above,  leads  to  the  various  suites  of  apartments, 
built  in  different  centuries.  And  yet,  my  dear  fellow,  they 
cut  off  the  heads  of  farmers-general  in  1793  !  Good  heavens  ! 
why  cannot  people  understand  that  miracles  of  art  are  impos- 
sible without  great  fortunes  and  lordly  lives  of  secure  tran- 
quillity. If  the  Opposition  must  needs  put  kings  to  death, 
they  might  leave  us  a  few  petty  princes  to  keep  up  insignifi- 
cant great  state. 

"At  the  present  day  these  accumulated  treasures  are  in  the 
keeping  of  a  little  woman  with  an  artist's  temperament. 
Not  content  with  restoring  the  place  on  a  large  scale,  she 
makes  a  labor  of  love  of  their  custody.  Philosophers,  falsely 
so  called,  who  are  wholly  taken  up  with  themselves,  while 

VOL.  10 — 27 


12  THE  PEASANTRY 

apparently  interested  in  Humanity,  call  these  pretty  things 
extravagances.  They  will  swoon  away  before  a  spinning- 
jenny,  and  wax  faint  with  bliss  over  tiresome  modern  indus- 
trial inventions,  as  if  we  of  to-day  were  any  greater  or  any 
happier  than  they  of  the  time  of  Henry  IV.,  of  Louis  XIV.,  of 
Louis  XVI.,who  set  their  seal  upon  this  chateau  of  the  Aigues. 
What  palace,  what  royal  chateau,  what  houses,  or  works  of  art, 
or  golden  brocaded  stuffs,  shall  we  leave  behind  us  ?  We  rum- 
mage out  our  grandmothers'  petticoats  to  cover  our  arm- 
chairs. Like  knavish  and  selfish  life-tenants,  we  pull  every- 
thing down  that  we  may  plant  cabbages  where  marvelous 
palaces  stood.  But  yesterday  the  plough  went  over  the  do- 
main of  Persan,  whence  one  of  the  richest  families  of  the 
Parliament  of  Paris  took  its  name;  Montmorency  has  fallen 
under  the  hammer — Montmorency,  on  which  one  of  the  Ital- 
ians about  Napoleon  spent  incredible  sums;  then  there  is  Le 
Val,  the  work  of  Eegnaud  de  Saint- Jean-d'Angely ;  and  Cas- 
san,  built  by  the  mistress  of  a  Prince  of  Conti;  four  royal 
dwelling-places  in  all  destroyed  quite  lately  in  the  valley  of 
the  Oise  alone.  We  are  making  ready  a  Roman  Campagna 
about  Paris  for  the  morrow  of  a  coming  sack,  when  the  storm- 
wind  from  the  North  shall  blow  upon  our  plaster  villas  and 
pasteboard  ornaments  and  .  .  . 

"Now,  just  see,  my  dear  fellow,  what  comes  of  the  habit 
of  writing  journalists'  padding.  Here  am  I,  rounding  off 
a  sort  of  article  for  you.  Can  it  be  that  the  mind,  like  a 
highway,  has  its  ruts?  I  will  pull  myself  up  at  once,  for  I 
am  robbing  them  at  the  office,  and  robbing  myself,  and,  prob- 
ably, to  make  you  yawn.  There  goes  the  second  bell  for  one 
of  those  abundant  breakfasts,  long  fallen  into  disuse,  in  the 
ordinary  way,  of  course,  in  Parisian  houses.  You  shall  have 
the  rest  of  this  to-morrow. 

"Now  for  the  history  of  my  Arcadia.  In  1815  there  died 
at  the  Aigues  one  of  the  most  celebrated  impures  of  last  cen- 
tury, an  opera  singer,  overlooked  by  the  guillotine,  and  for- 
gotten by  the  aristocracy,  literature,  and  finance;  intimate 
as  she  had  been  with  finance,  literature,  and  the  aristocracy, 


THE  PEASANTRY  13 

and  on  a  bowing  acquaintance  with  the  guillotine,  she  had 
fallen  into  neglect,  like  many  charming  old  ladies,  who  ex- 
piate the  triumphs  of  youth  in  the  country,  and  take  a  new 
love  for  a  lost  love,  nature  replacing  human  nature.  Such 
women  live  with  the  flowers,  the  scent  of  the  woods,  the  open 
sky,  and  the  light  of  the  sun,  with  everything  that  sings,  or 
flutters,  or  shines,  or  springs  from  the  earth ;  birds,  or  lizards, 
or  blossoms,  or  grass.  They  know  nothing  about  these  things ; 
they  do  not  seek  to  explain  it,  but  they  have  a  capacity  for 
loving  left  in  age;  and  so  well  do  they  love,  that  dukes  and 
marshals,  old  jealousies  and  bickerings,  and  farmers-general, 
and  their  follies  and  luxurious  extravagance,  and  paste  gems 
and  diamonds,  and  rouge  and  high-heeled  pantofles,  are  all 
forgotten  for  the  sweets  of  a  country  life. 

"I  am  in  the  possession  of  valuable  information  which 
throws  a  light  on  Mile.  Laguerre's  later  life;  for  I  have  felt 
rather  uncomfortable  now  and  again  about  the  old  age  of  such 
as  Florine,  and  Mariette,  and  Suzanne  du  Val-Noble,  and 
Tullia,  just  like  any  child  who  puzzles  his  wits  to  know  where 
all  the  old  moons  go. 

"Mile.  Laguerre  took  fright  in  1790  at  the  turn  things  were 
taking,  and  came  to  settle  down  at  the  Aigues,  which  Bouret 
had  bought  for  her  (he  spent  several  summers  here  with  her). 
The  fate  of  the  du  Barry  put  her  in  such  a  quaking  that  she 
buried  her  diamonds.  She  was  only  fifty-three  years  old  at 
the  time,  and,  according  to  her  woman  (who  has  married  a 
gendarme  here,  a  Mme.  Soudry,  whom  they  call  Mme.  la 
Mairesse,  a  piece  of  brazen-fronted  flattery),  'Madame  was 
handsomer  than  ever.'  Nature,  my  dear  fellow,  has  her  rea- 
sons for  what  she  does,  no  doubt,  when  she  treats  these 
creatures  as  pet  children ;  debauchery  does  not  kill  them ; 
on  the  contrary,  they  thrive,  and  flourish,  and  renew  their 
youth  upon  it ;  lympathic  though  they  look,  they  have  nerves 
which  sustain  their  marvelous  framework,  and  bloom  peren- 
nially from  a  cause  which  would  make  a  virtuous  woman  hid- 
eous. Decidedly,  Fate  is  not  a  moral  agent. 

"Mile.  Laguerre's  life  here  was  above  reproach,  nay,  might 


14  THE  PEASANTRY 

it  not  almost  be  classed  with  the  Lives  of  the  Saints,  after 
that  famous  adventure  of  hers?  One  evening,  driven  dis- 
tracted by  hopeless  love,  she  fled  from  the  Opera  in  her  stage 
costume,  and  spent  the  night  in  weeping  by  the  roadside  out 
in  the  fields  (how  we  have  slandered  love  in  the  time  of  Louis 
XV. ! ) .  The  dawn  was  so  unwonted  a  sight  to  her,  that  she 
sang  her  sweetest  airs  to  greet  it.  Some  peasants  gathered 
about  her,  attracted  as  much  by  her  pose  as  by  her  tinsel  frip- 
peries, and  amazed  by  her  gestures,  her  beauty,  and  her  sing- 
ing, they  one  and  all  took  her  for  an  angel,  and  fell  upon  their 
knees.  But  for  Voltaire,  there  would  have  been  another  mir- 
acle at  Bagnolet. 

"I  know  not  whether  Heaven  will  give  much  credit  to  this 
sinner  for  her  tardy  virtue,  for  a  life  of  pleasure  becomes 
loathsome  to  one  so  palled  with  pleasure  as  a  wanton  of  the 
stage  of  the  time  of  Louis  XV.  Mile.  Laguerre  was  born  in 
1740.  She  was  in  the  full  bloom  of  her  beauty  in  1760,  when 

they  nicknamed  M.  de (the  name  escapes  me)  Ministre 

de  la  guerre,  on  account  of  his  liaison  with  her. 

"She  changed  her  name,  which  was  quite  unknown  in  the 
country,  called  herself  Mme.  des  Aigues,  the  better  to  bury 
herself  in  the  district,  and  amused  herself  by  keeping  up  her 
estate  with  extremely  artistic  taste.  When  Bonaparte  became 
First  Consul,  she  rounded  off  her  property  with  some  of  the 
Church  lands,  selling  her  diamonds  to  buy  them;  and  as  an 
opera-girl  is  scarcely  fitted  to  shine  in  the  management  of 
estates,  she  left  the  land  to  her  steward,  and  devoted  her  per- 
sonal attention  to  her  park,  her  fruit-trees,  and  her  flower- 
garden. 

"Mademoiselle  being  dead  and  buried  at  Blangy,  the  notary 
from  Soulanges  (the  little  place  between  Ville-aux-Fayes  and 
Blangy)  made  an  exhaustive  inventory,  and  in  course  of  time 
discovered  the  famous  singer's  next-of-kin;  she  herself  knew 
nothing  about  them;  but  eleven  families,  poor  agricultural 
laborers,  living  near  Amiens,  lay  down  in  rags  one  night,  and 
woke  up  next  morning  in  sheets  of  gold. 

"The  Aigues  had  to  be  sold,  of  course,  and  Montcornet 


THE  PEASANTRY  15 

bought  it.  In  various  posts  in  Spain  and  Pomerania  he 
had  managed  to  save  the  requisite  amount,  something  like 
eleven  hundred  thousand  francs.  The  furniture  was  in- 
cluded in  the  purchase.  It  seems  as  if  the  fine  place  must 
always  belong  to  some  one  in  the  War  Department,  Doubt- 
less, the  General  was  not  insensible  to  the  luxurious  influences 
of  his  ground-floor  apartments,  and  in  talking  to  the  Count- 
ess yesterday  I  insisted  that  the  Aigues  had  determined  his 
marriage. 

"If  you  are  to  appreciate  the  Countess,  my  dear  fellow,  you 
must  know  that  the  General  is  choleric  in  temper,  sanguine 
in  complexion,  and  stands  five  feet  nine  inches;  is  round  as 
a  barrel,  bull-necked,  and  the  owner  of  a  pair  of  shoulders 
for  which  a  smith  might  forge  a  model  cuirass.  Montcornet 
commanded  a  company  of  Cuirassiers  at  Essling  (called  by 
the  Austrians  Gross- Aspern),  and  did  not  lose  his  life  when 
his  magnificent  cavalry  was  pushed  back  into  the  Danube. 
Man  and  horse  managed  to  cross  the  river  on  a  huge  beam  of 
wood.  The  Cuirassiers,  finding  that  the  bridge  was  broken, 
turned  like  heroes  when  Montcornet  gave  the  word,  and  stood 
their  ground  against  the  whole  Austrian  army.  They  took 
up  more  than  thirty  cartloads  of  cuirasses  next  day  on  the 
field,  and  among  themselves  the  Germans  coined  a  special 
nickname  for  the  Cuirassiers — those  'men  of  iron.'* 

*I  set  my  face  on  principle  against  footnotes ;  but  the  present  one,  the  first  which 
I  have  permitted  myself,  may  be  excused  on  the  score  of  its  historical  interest.  It 
will  show,  moreover,  that  battle  scenes  have  yet  to  be  described  in  other  than  the 
dry  technical  language  of  military  writers,  who,  for  three  thousand  years,  can  speak 
of  nothing  but  right  wings,  left  wings,  and  centres  more  or  less  routed,  but  say  not 
a  word  of  the  soldier,  his  heroism,  and  his  hardships.  The  conscientious  manner 
in  which  I  am  setting  about  the  Scenes  dela  vie  militaire  has  meant  a  series  of  visits 
to  every  battlefield  at  home  or  abroad  watered  by  French  blood,  so  I  determined  to 
see  the  field  of  Wagram.  As  I  reached  the  bank  of  the  Danube  opposite  Lobau,  I 
noticed  ribbed  marks  under  the  soft  grass,  something  like  the  furrows  in  a  field  of 
luzern,  and  asked  the  peasant,  our  guide,  about  this  new  system  of  agriculture  (for 
so  I  took  it  to  be).  "  That  is  where  the  Cuirassiers  of  the  Imperial  Guard  are  lying," 
he  said;  "  they  are  buried  under  those  mounds  that  you  see."  The  words  sent  a 
shiver  through  me;  and  Prince  Friedrich  von  Schwartzenberg,  who  interpreted 
them,  added  that  this  very  peasant  had  driven  the  train  of  carts  full  of  the  cuirasses 
of  the  dead,  and  that  by  one  of  the  grotesque  accidents  of  war  it  was  the  same  man 
who  prepared  Napoleon's  breakfast  on  the  morning  of  the  battle.  Poor  though  he 


16  THE  PEASANTRY 

"Montcornet  looks  like  a  hero  of  ancient  times.  He  has 
strong  muscular  arms,  a  broad  resonant  chest,  a  head  strik- 
ing from  its  leonine  character,  and  a  voice  that  can  sound 
the  command  to  'Charge!'  above  the  din  of  battle;  but  his  is 
the  courage  of  a  sanguine  temperament — unreasoning  and 
uncalculating.  Montcornet  is  an  awe-inspiring  figure  at  first 
sight,  like  many  another  general  whom  the  soldier's  common- 
sense,  the  wariness  of  a  man  who  continually  takes  his  life 
in  his  hand,  and  the  habit  of  command  seemingly  raise  above 
other  men.  You  take  him  for  a  Titan,  but  he  harbors  a  dwarf 
in  him,  like  the  pasteboard  giant  who  greeted  Queen  Eliza- 
beth at  the  gate  of  Kenilworth  Castle.  Choleric  and  kind, 
full  of  the  pride  of  the  Empire,  he  has  the  caustic  tongue 
of  a  soldier,,  quick  with  a  word,  quicker  still  with  a  blow. 
The  man  who  made  so  grand  a  figure  on  the  battlefield  be- 
comes unbearable  in  domestic  life,  all  his  ideas  of  love  were 
learned  in  the  camp,  his  is  that  soldiers'  love  for  whom  the 
ancients  (ingenious  makers  of  myths)  discovered  a  tutelary 
deity  in  Eros — offspring  of  Mars  and  Venus.  Those  delicious 

was,  he  had  kept  the  double  napoleon  which  the  Emperor  had  given  him  for  his 
eggs  and  milk.  The  cure  of  Gross- Aspern  showed  us  over  the  famous  cemetery 
where  Frenchmen  and  Austrians  foufjht  in  blood  halfway  to  the  knee  with  courage 
equally  obstinate  and  equally  splendid  on  either  side.  But  there  was  a  marble  tab- 
let in  the  place  on  which  we  concentrated  our  whole  attention,  the  cur6  explaining 
how  that  it  was  erected  to  the  memory  of  the  owner  of  Gross-Aspern,  killed  on  the 
third  day  of  the  fight,  and  that  it  was  the  only  return  made  to  the  family.  Then  he 
said,  with  deep  sadness  in  his  tones,  "  That  was  a  time  of  great  misery  ;  a  time  of 
great  promises;  but  now  to-day  is  the  day  of  forgetfulness.  ..."  The  words 
seemed  to  me  to  be  grandly  simple  ;  but  when  I  had  thought  the  matter  over,  the 
apparent  ingratitude  of  the  House  of  Austria  seemed  to  me  to  be  justifiable.  Neither 
peoples  nor  kings  are  rich  enough  to  reward  all  the  devotion  shown  in  the  hour  of 
supreme  struggle.  Let  those  who  serve  a  cause  with  a  lurking  thought  of  reward 
set  a  price  on  their  blood,  and  turn  condot fieri .'  Those  who  handle  sword  or  pen  for 
their  country  should  think  of  nothing  but  how  to  "play  the  man,"  as  our  fore- 
fathers used  to  say,  and  accept  nothing,  not  even  glory  itself,  save  as  a  lucky 
accident. 

Three  times  they  stormed  that  famous  cemetery ;  the  third  time  Masse'na  made 
his  famous  address  to  his  men  from  the  roach-body  in  which  they  carried  the 
Wounded  hero,  "  You've  five  sous  a  day,  you  blackguards,  and  I've  forty  millions  ; 
and  you  let  me  go  in  front !"  Every  one  knows  the  order  of  the  day  that  the 
Emperor  sent  to  his  lieutenant  by  M.  de  Sainte-Croix,  who  swam  the  Danube  three 
times,  "  Die,  or  take  the  village  again  ;  the  existence  of  the  Army  is  at  stake  ;  thj 
bridges  are  broken."— THE  AUTHOR. 


THE  PEASANTRY  If 

religious  chroniclers  admit  half  a  score  of  different  Loves. 
Make  a  study  of  the  paternity  and  attributes  of  each,  and  you 
will  provide  yourself  with  a  social  nomenclature  of  the  com- 
pletest  kind.  We  imagine  that  we  invent  this  or  that,  do  we  ? 
— When  the  globe,  like  a  dreaming  sick  man,  turns  again 
through  another  cycle,  and  our  continents  become  oceans,  the 
Frenchman  of  the  coming  time  will  find  a  steam-engine,  a 
cannon,  a  copy  of  a  daily  paper,  and  a  charter,  lying  wrapped 
about  with  weeds  at  the  bottom  of  our  present  Atlantic. 

"Now,  the  Countess,  my  dear  boy,  is  a  little  woman,  fragile 
and  delicate  and  timid.  What  say  you  to  this  marriage  ?  Any 
one  who  knows  the  world,  knows  that  this  sort  of  thing  hap- 
pens so  often  that  a  well-assorted  marriage  is  an  exception. 
I  came  here  to  see  how  this  tiny  slender  woman  holds  the 
leading  strings;  for  she  has  this  huge,  tall,  square-built  Gen- 
eral of  hers  quite  as  well  in  hand  as  ever  he  kept  his  Cuiras- 
siers. 

"If  Montcornet  raises  his  voice  before  his  Virginie,  madame 
lays  her  finger  on  her  lips,  and  he  holds  his  tongue.  The  old 
soldier  goes  to  smoke  his  pipe  or  cigar  in  a  summer-house 
fifty  paces  away  from  the  chateau,  and  .perfumes  himself  be- 
fore he  comes  back.  He  is  proud  of  his  subjection.  If  any- 
thing is  suggested,  he  turns  to  her,  like  a  bear  infatuated  for 
grapes,  with  'That  is  as  madame  pleases.'  He  comes  to  his 
wife's  room,  the  paved  floor  creaking  like  boards  under  his 
heavy  tread ;  and  if  she  cries  in  a  startled  voice,  'Do  not  come 
in !'  he  describes  a  right  wheel  in  military  fashion,  meekly  re- 
marking, 'You  will  let  me  know  when  I  may  come  and  speak 
to  you  .  .  .  '  and  this  from  the  voice  that  roared  to  his 
cuirassiers  on  the  banks  of  the  Danube,  'Boys,  there  is  noth- 
ing for  it  but  to  die,  and  to  die  handsomely,  since  there  is 
nothing  else  to  be  done !'  A  touching  little  thing  I  once  heard 
him  say  of  his  wife,  'I  not  only  love  her,  I  reverence  her.' 
Sometimes,  in  one  of  his  fits  of  rage,  when  his  wrath  knows 
no  bounds,  and  pours  out  in  torrents  that  carry  all  before  it, 
the  little  woman  goes  to  her  room  and  leaves  him  to  storm. 
But  four  or  five  days  later  she  will  say,  'Don't  put  yourself 


18  THE  PEASANTRY 

in  a  passion,  you  will  break  a  blood-vessel  on  your  lungs,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  pain  it  gives  me/  and  the  Lion  of  Essling 
takes  to  flight  to  dry  the  tears  in  his  eyes.  If  he  comes  into 
the  salon  when  we  are  deep  in  conversation,  'Leave  us,'  she 
says,  'he  is  reading  something  to  me,'  and  the  General  goes. 

"None  but  strong  men,  great-natured  and  hot-tempered, 
among  these  thunderbolts  of  battle,  diplomates  with  Olympian 
brows  and  men  of  genius,  are  capable  of  these  courses  of  con- 
fidence, of  generosity  for  weakness,  of  constant  protection 
and  love  without  jealousy,  of  this  bonhomie  with  a  woman. 
Faith !  I  rate  the  Countess'  science  as  far  above  crabbed  and 
peevish  virtues  as  the  satin  of  a  settee  above  the  Utrecht  vel- 
vet of  a  dingy  back  parlor  sofa. 

"Six  days  have  I  spent  in  this  admirable  country,  dear  fel- 
low, and  I  am  not  tired  yet  of  admiring  the  wonders  of  this 
park  land  with  the  dark  forests  rising  above  it,  and  the  paths 
beside  the  streams.  Everything  here  fascinates  me — Nature, 
and  the  stillness  of  Nature,  quiet  enjoyment,  the  easy  life 
which  Nature  offers.  Ah !  here  is  real  literature,  there  are 
never  defects  of  style  in  a  meadow;  and  complete  fyappiness 
would  be  complete  forgetfulness  even  of  the  Debats. 

"You  ought  not  to  need  to  be  told  that  we  have  had  two  wet 
mornings.  While  the  Countess  slept,  and  Montcornet 
tramped  over  his  property,  driven  to  keep  the  promise  so 
rashly  given,  I  have  been  writing  to  you. 

"Hitherto,  though  I  was  born  in  Alengon,  the  son  of  an 
old  justice  and  a  prefect  (if  what  they  tell  me  is  true), 
though  I  am  something  of  a  judge  of  grass  land,  I  had  heard 
of  such  things  as  estates  that  brought  in  four  or  five  thousand 
francs  a  month,  but  I  regarded  these  as  idle  tales.  Money, 
for  me,  has  but  four  hideous  convertible  terms — work,  book- 
sellers, journalism,  and  politics.  When  shall  we  have  an  es- 
tate where  money  grows  out  of  the  earth,  in  some  pretty  place 
in  the  country  ?  That  is  what  I  wish  you  in  the  name  of  the 
theatre,  the  press,  and  literature.  Amen  ! 

"How  Florine  will  envy  the  lamented  Mile.  Laguerre !  Our 
modern  Bourets  have  lost  the  old  French  lordly  instinct  which 


THE  PEASANTRY  19 

taught  them  how  to  live ;  they  will  club  three  together  to  take 
a  box  at  the  Opera,  and  go  shares  in  a  pleasure ;  no  longer  do 
they  cut  down  magnificently  bound  quartos  to  match  the 
octavos  on  their  shelves.  It  is  as  much  as  they  will  do  to  buy 
a  book  in  paper  covers.  What  are  we  coming  to  ?  Good-bye, 
children ;  keep  your  benign  Blondet  in  loving  remembrance/' 

If  this  letter,  which  dropped  from  the  idlest  pen  in  France, 
had  not  been  preserved  by  a  miraculous  chance,  it  would  be  all 
but  impossible  now  to  describe  the  Aigues  as  it  used  to  be, 
and  without  this  description  the  twice  tragical  tale  of  the 
events  which  took  place  there  would  perhaps  be  less  interest- 
ing. 

Plenty  of  people  expect,  no  doubt,  to  see  the  General's 
cuirass  lighted  up  by  a  lightning  flash,  to  see  his  wrath  kin- 
dled, his  fury  descend  like  a  waterspout  on  this  little  woman, 
in  fact,  to  find  the  usual  curtain  scene  of  melodrama — a  trag- 
edy in  a  bedroom.  How  should  this  modern  tragedy  .develop 
itself  in  the  pretty  salon  beyond  the  bluish  enameled  door- 
ways, garrulous  with  mythological  loves  ?  Strange  bright  birds 
were  painted  over  the  ceiling  and  the  shutters;  china  mon- 
sters were  splitting  their  sides  with  laughter  on  the  mantel- 
shelf; the  blue  dragons  played  on  the  rich  vases,  twisting 
their  tails  in  spiral  scrolls  along  the  rim  which  some  Japanese 
artist  enameled  with  a  maze  of  color  to  please  his  fancy,  and 
the  very  chairs,  lounges,  sofas,  console  tables,  and  stands 
dwelt  in  an  atmosphere  of  contemplative  idleness  enervating 
to  body  and  mind.  No;  this  tragedy  extends  beyond  the 
sphere  of  domestic  life,  it  is  played  out  upon  a  higher  or 
a  lower  stage.  Do  not  look  for  passion  here ;  the  bare  truth 
will  only  be  too  dramatic.  And  the  historian  moreover  should 
never  forget  that  it  is  his  duty  to  allot  to  each  his  part ;  that 
the  rich  and  the  poor  are  equal  before  his  pen;  and  for  him 
the  figure  of  the  peasant  has  the  greatness  of  his  miseries, 
the  rich  man  the  pettiness  of  his  absurdities.  After  all,  the 
rich  have  passions,  the  peasant  knows  nothing  beyond  natural 
cravings,  and  therefore  the  peasant's  lot  is  doubly  poor ;  and  if 


20  THE  PEASANTRY 

it  is  a  political  necessity,  that  his  aggressions  should  be 
sternly  checked,  from  a  human  and  religious  point  of  view  he 
should  be  treated  reverently. 


II 

A  BUCOLIC  OVERLOOKED  BY  VIRGIL 

WHEN  a  Parisian  drops  down  into  some  country  place, 
and  finds  himself  cut  off  from  all  his  accustomed  ways,  he 
soon  finds  time  hang  heavily  on  his  hands  in  spite  of  the  ut- 
most ingenuity  on  the  part  of  his  entertainers.  Indeed,  your 
host  and  hostess  being  aware  that  the  pleasures  of  a  tete-a- 
tete  (by  nature  fugitive)  cannot  endure  for  ever,  will  tell 
you  placidly  that  "you  will  find  it  very  dull  here;"  and,  in 
fact,  any  one  who  wishes  to  know  the  delights  of  a  life  in  the 
country  must  have  some  interest  to  keep  him  in  the  coun- 
try, must  know  its  toils  and  the  alternations  of  pain  and  pleas- 
ure that  make  up  harmony — the  eternal  symbol  of  human 
life. 

When  the  visitor  has  recovered  from  the  effects  of  the  jour- 
ney, made  up  arrears  of  slumber,  and  has  fallen  in  with  coun- 
try ways  of  life,  a  Parisian  who  is  neither  a  sportsman  nor  a 
farmer,  and  wears  thin  walking  shoes,  is  apt  to  discover  that 
the  early  morning  hours  pass  slowest  of  all.  The  women  are 
still  asleep  or  at  their  toilettes,  and  invisible  until  breakfast 
time;  the  master  of  the  house  went  out  early  to  see  after  his 
affairs;  and  from  eight  o'clock  till  eleven  therefore  (for  in 
nearly  all  chateaux  they  breakfast  at  that  hour)  a  Parisian 
is  left  to  his  own  society.  He  seeks  amusement  in  the  small 
details  of  his  toilet,  a  short-lived  expedient;  and  unless  a 
man  of  letters  has  brought  down  with  him  some  bit  of  work 
(which  he  finds  impossible  to  do,  and  takes  back  to  town  un- 
touched, and  with  no  added  knowledge  of  it  save  of  the  diffi- 
culties at  the  outset),  he  is  reduced  to  pace  the  alleys  in  the 


THE  PEASANTRY  21 

park,  to  gape  and  gaze  and  count  the  tree  trunks.  The 
easier  a  life  is,  the  more  irksome  it  grows,  unless  you  happen 
to  belong  to  the  Shaker  community,  or  to  the  worshipful  com- 
pany of  carpenters  or  bird-stuffers. 

If,  like  the  landowners,  you  were  to  remain  in  the  country 
for  the  rest  of  your  days,  you  would  provide  your  tedium  with 
some  hobby — geological,  mineralogical,  botanical,  or  what 
not;  but  no  sensible  man  will  contract  a  vice  that  may  last 
through  his  life  for  the  sake  of  killing  time  for  a  fortnight. 
The  most  magnificent  country-house  soon  becomes  wearisome 
to  those  who  own  nothing  of  it  but  the  view;  the  beauties  of 
nature  seem  very  paltry  compared  with  the  theatrical  repre- 
sentations of  them,  and  Parisian  life  sparkles  from  every 
facet.  If  a  man  is  not  under  the  particular  spell  which  keeps 
him  attached  (like  Blondet)  to  spots  honored  by  her  footsteps 
and  lighted  by  her  eyes,  he  is  fit  to  envy  the  birds  their  wings, 
that  so  he  may  return  to  the  ceaseless  and  thrilling  dramatic 
spectacle  of  Paris,  and  its  harrowing  struggles  for  existence. 

From  the  length  of  the  journalist's  letter,  any  shrewd  ob- 
server should  guess  that  the  writer  had  mentally  and  physi- 
cally reached  that  peculiar  phase  of  repletion  consequent  on 
satisfied  desire  and  glut  of  happiness,  which  is  perfectly  illus- 
trated by  the  state  of  the  domestic  fowl,  when,  fattened  by 
force,  with  head  declining  upon  a  too  protuberant  crop,  the 
victim  stands  planted  on  both  feet,  unable  and  unwilling  to 
give  so  much  as  a  glance  to  the  most  tempting  morsel.  When, 
therefore,  Blondet  had  finished  his  formidable  letter,  he  felt 
a  longing  to  go  beyond  the  bounds  of  this  Armida's  Garden, 
to  find  anything  to  enliven  the  deadly  dulness  of  the  early 
hours  of  the  day,  for  between  breakfast  and  dinner  he  spent 
his  time  with  his  hostess,  who  knew  how  to  make  it  pass 
quickly. 

Mme.  de  Montcornet  had  kept  a  clever  man  a  whole  month 
in  the  country,  and  had  not  seen  the  feigned  smile  of  satiety 
on  his  face,  nor  detected  the  incipient  yawn  of  boredom  which 
can  never  be  concealed.  This  is  one  of  a  woman's  greatest 
triumphs.  An  affection  proof  against  such  tests  should  last 


22  THE  PEASANTRY 

for  ever.  Why  women  do  not  put  their  lovers  on  a  trial  which 
neither  fool  nor  egoist  nor  narrow  nature  can  abide,  is  utterly 
incomprehensible.  Philip  II.  himself,  that  Alexander  of  dis- 
simulation, would  have  begun  to  blab  his  secrets  after  a 
month's  tete-a-tete  in  the  country.  For  which  reason,  kings 
spend  their  lives  in  a  perpetual  bustle  and  racket,  and  never 
allow  anybody  to  see  them  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  an  hour 
at  a  time. 

Yet  notwithstanding  the  delicate  attentions  of  one  of  the 
most  charming  women  in  Paris,  Emile  Blondet  played  truant 
with  a  relish  long  forgotten.  The  day  when  his  letter  was 
finished  he  told  Frangois  (the  head-servant,  specially  ap- 
pointed to  wait  upon  him)  to  call  him  early.  He  had  made 
up  his  mind  to  explore  the  valley  of  the  Avonne. 

The  Avonne  at  its  head  is  a  small  river.  Many  streams  that 
rise  round  about  the  Aigues  go  to  swell  it  below  Conches,  and 
at  Ville-aux-Fayes  it  joins  one  of  the  largest  affluents  of  the 
Seine.  The  Avonne  is  navigable  for  rafts  for  four  leagues; 
Jean  Eouvet's  invention  has  given  all  their  commercial  value 
to  the  forests  of  Aigues,  Soulanges,  and  Eonquerolles,  on  the 
heights  above  the  picturesque  river.  The  park  of  the  Aigues 
takes  up  most  of  the  valley  between  the  river  that  flows  below 
the  wooded  heights  on  either  side,  called  the  Forest  of  the 
Aigues,  and  the  king's  highway,  mapped  out  on  the  horizon 
by  a  line  of  old  warped  elm-trees  running  parallel  with  the 
hills  (so  called)  of  the  Avonne,  the  lowest  steps  of  the  grand 
amphitheatre  of  the  Morvan. 

To  use  a  homely  metaphor,  the  shape  of  the  park  was  some- 
thing like  a  huge  fish  lying  in  the  valley  bottom,  with  the  head 
at  Conches  and  the  tail  at  Blangy,  the  length  much  exceeding 
the  breadth,  and  the  broadest  part  in  the  middle  full  five  times 
the  width  of  the  valley  at  Blangy,  or  six  times  the  width  at 
Conches.  Possibly  the  lie  of  the  land,  thus  set  among  three 
villages  (Soulanges,  whence  you  plunge  down  into  this  Eden, 
being  but  a  league  away),  may  have  assisted  to  foment  dis- 
cord, and  suggested  the  excesses  which  form  the  chief  subject 
of  this  Scene;  for  if  passing  travelers  look  down  on  the  para- 


THE  PEASANTRY  23 

clise  of  the  Aigues  from  Ville-aux-Fayes  with  envious  eyes, 
how  should  the  well-to-do  townsfolk  of  Soulanges  and  Ville- 
aux-Fayes  feel  less  covetous  when  they  behold  it  every  day  of 
their  lives  ?  . 

This  last  bit  of  topographical  detail  is  needed  if  the  posi- 
tion is  to  be  understood,  as  well  as  the  why  and  wherefore  of 
four  park  gates  at  the  Aigues;  for  the  whole  park  was  shut 
in  by  walls,  save  where  a  ha-ha  fence  had  been  substituted 
for  the  sake  of  the  view.  The  four  gates,  called  respectively 
the  Conches  gate,  the  Avonne,  the  Avenue,  and  Blangy  gates, 
were  so  full  of  the  character  of  the  different  times  in  which 
they  were  built,  that  they  shall  be  described  in  their  place  for 
the  benefit  of  archaeologists ;  but  the  subject  shall  receive  the 
concise  treatment  which  Blondet  gave  to  the  avenue  itself. 

For  a  week  the  illustrious  editor  of  the  Journal  des  Debats 
had  taken  his  walks  abroad  with  the  Countess,  till  he  knew  by 
heart  the  Chinese  pavilion,  bridges,  islands,  kiosks,  hermit- 
age, chalet,  ruined  temple,  Babylonish  ice-house ;  in  short,  all 
the  ins  and  outs  of  the  gardens  planned  by  an  architect  with 
nine  hundred  acres  at  his  disposal.  Now,  therefore,  he  felt 
inclined  to  trace  the  course  of  the  Avonne,  which  his  host 
and  hostess  daily  praised  to  him.  Every  evening  he  had 
planned  the  excursion,  every  morning  he  forgot  all  about  it. 
And,  indeed,  above  the  park  the  Avonne  is  like  an  Alpine  tor- 
rent, hollowing  out  its  rocky  bed,  and  fashioning  deep  pools, 
where  it  sinks  underground.  Here  and  there  there  is  a  water- 
fall, when  some  little  stream  unexpectedly  splashes  into  it; 
here  and  there  it  broadens  out  like  a  miniature  Loire,  and 
ripples  over  sandy  shallows,  but  it  is  a  stream  so  changeful 
in  its  moods  that  rafts  are  out  of  the  question.  Blondet  struck 
up  through  the  park  by  the  shortest  way  to  the  Conches  gate, 
which  deserves  a  few  words  of  description,  if  only  for  the  sake 
of  the  historical  associations  connected  with  the  property. 

The  founder  of  the  Aigues  was  a  cadet  -oi  the  house  of 
Soulanges,  who  married  an  heiress,  and  was  minded  to  snap 
his  fingers  at  his  oldest  brother,  an  amiable  sentiment  to  which 
we  also  owe  the  Isola-Bella,  the  fairyland  on  Lake  Maggiore. 


24  THE  PEASANTRY 

In  the  Middle  Ages  the  castle  of  the  Aigues  stood  beside  the 
Avonne;  but  of  the  whole  stronghold  only  one  gateway  re- 
mained, a  porched  gateway  of  the  kind  usual  in  fortified 
towns,  with  a  pepper-box  turret  on  either  side  of.it.  The  pon- 
derous masonry  above  the  arch  was  gay  with  wallflowers,  and 
pierced  by  three  great  mullion  windows.  A  spiral  stair- 
case had  been  contrived  to  give  access  to  two  dwelling-rooms 
in  the  first  turret,  and  to  a  kitchen  in  the  second.  On  the 
roof  ridge  of  the  porch,  steep  pitched,  like  all  such  construc- 
tions in  the  olden  time,  stood  a  couple  of  weather-cocks, 
adorned  with  quaint  ironwork.  Not  many  places  can  boast 
of  a  townhall  so  imposing. 

The  scutcheon  of  the  Soulanges  family  was  still  visible  on 
the  keystone  of  the  arch  of  a  hard  stone  selected  for  its  pur- 
pose by  the  craftsman  whose  chisel  had  engraven  the  arms  of 
Soulanges — azure,  three  palmer's  staves  per  pale  argent,  five 
crosslets  fitchy  sable  on  a  fess  gules  over  all,  differenced  by  a 
mark  of  cadency.  Blondet  spelt  out  the  device  Je  soule  agir — 
It  is  my  wont  to  act — a  bit  of  word-play  such  as  crusaders 
loved  to  make  on  their  names,  and  an  excellent  maxim  which 
Montcornet  to  his  sorrow  neglected,  as  shall  be  seen.  The 
heavy  old  wooden  door  was  heavier  yet  by  reason  of  the  iron 
studs  arranged  in  groups  of  five  upon  it.  A  pretty  girl 
opened  it  for  Blondet ;  and  a  keeper,  awakened  by  the  groan- 
ing of  the  hinges,  put  his  head  out  of  the  window.  The  man 
was  in  his  night-shirt. 

"What  is  this?  Our  keepers  are  still  abed  at  this  time  of 
day,  are  they?"  thought  the  Parisian,  who  imagined  that  he 
knew  all  about  forest  customs. 

With  a  quarter  of  an  hour's  walk  he  reached  the  springs  of 
the  river,  and  from  the  upper  end  of  the  valley  at  Conches 
the  whole  enchanting  view  lay  before  his  eyes.  A  descrip- 
tion of  that  landscape,  like  the  history  of  France,  might  fill  a 
thousand  volumes,  or  could  be  condensed  into  a  single  book. 
Let  a  couple  of  phrases  suffice. 

Picture  a  bulging  mass  of  rock,  covered  with  the  velvet  of 
dwarf  shrubs,  placed  so  that  it  looks  like  some  huge  tortoise 


THE  PEASANTRY  25 

set  across  the  Avonne  which  wears  its  way  out  at  the  foot,  a 
rock  that  describes  an  arch  through  which  you  behold  a  little 
sheet  of  water,  clear  as  a  mirror,  where  Avonne  seems  to  sleep 
before  it  breaks  in  waterfalls  over  the  huge  boulders  where 
the  dwarf  willows,  supple  as  springs,  perpetually  yield  to  the 
force  of  the  current,  only  to  fly  back  again. 

Up  above  the  waterfalls  the  hillsides  are  cut  sharply  away, 
like  some  Rhineland  crag  clad  with  mosses  and  heather;  they 
are  rifted,  too,  like  the  Rhine  crag  by  strata  of  schist,  where 
springs  of  white  water  bubble  out  here  and  there,  each  one 
above  a  little  space  of  grass,  always  fresh  and  green,  which 
serves  as  a  cup  for  the  spring ;  and  finally,  by  way  of  contrast 
to  the  wild  solitude  of  nature,  you  see  the  outposts  of  civiliza- 
tion :  Conches,  and  the  gardens  on  the  edge  of  the  fields,  and 
beyond  the  picturesque  wilderness  the  assembled  roofs  of  the 
village  and  the  church  spire. 

Behold  the  two  phrases !  But  the  sunrise,  the  pure  air,  the 
dew  crystals,  -the  blended  music  of  woods  and  water,  these 
must  be  divined ! 

"Faith,  it  is  nearly  as  fine  as  the  Opera !"  said  Blondet  to 
himself,  as  he  clambered  up  the  torrent  bed  of  the  Avonne. 
The  caprices  of  the  higher  stream  brought  out  all  the  depth, 
stillness,  and  straightness  of  the  Avonne  in  the  valley,  shut  in 
by  tall  trees  and  the  Forest  of  the  Aigues.  He  did  not,  how- 
ever, pursue  his  morning  walk  very  far.  He  was  soon  brought 
to  a  stand  by  a  peasant,  one  of  the  subordinate  characters  so 
necessary  to  the  action  of  this  drama  that  it  is  doubtful 
whether  they  or  the  principal  characters  play  the  more  im- 
portant parts. 

Blondet,  that  clever  writer,  reached  a  boulder-strewn  spot, 
where  the  main  stream  was  pent  as  if  between  two  doors,  when 
he  saw  the  man  standing  so  motionless  that  his  journalist's 
curiosity  would  have  been  aroused,  even  if  the  figure  and 
clothing  of  the  living  statue  had  not  already  puzzled  him  not 
a  little. 

In  that  poverty-stricken  figure  he  saw  an  old  man  such  as 
Charlet  loved  to  draw;  the  strongly-built  frame,  schooled  to 


26  THE  PEASANTRY 

endure  hardship,  might  have  belonged  to  one  of  the  troopers 
depicted  by  the  soldier's  Homer;  the  rugged  purplish-red 
countenance  gave  him  kinship  with  Charlet's  immortal  scav- 
engers, unschooled  by  resignation.  An  almost  bald  head  was 
protected  from  the  inclemency  of  the  weather  by  a  coarse  felt 
hat,  the  brim  stitched  to  the  crown  here  and  there,  and  from 
under  the  hat  one  or  two  locks  of  hair  straggled  out ;  an  artist 
would  have  given  four  francs  an  hour  for  the  chance  of  study- 
ing from  the  life  that  dazzling  snow,  arranged  after  the 
fashion  of  the  Eternal  Father  of  classic  art.  Yet  there  was 
something  in  the  way  in  which  the  cheeks  sank  in,  continuing 
the  lines  of  the  mouth,  that  plainly  said  that  this  toothless 
old  person  went  more  often  to  the  barrel  than  to  the  bread- 
hutch.  The  short  white  bristles  of  a  scanty  beard  gave  an  ex- 
pression of  menace  to  his  face.  A  pair  of  little  eyes,  oblique 
as  a  pig's,  and  too  small  for  his  huge  countenance,  suggested 
a  combination  of  sloth  and  cunning ;  but  at  that  moment,  as 
he  pored  upon  the  river,  fire  seemed  to  flash  frpm  them. 

For  all  clothing  the  poor  man  wor,e  a  blouse,  which  had 
been  blue  in  former  times,  and  a  pair  of  trousers  of  the  coarse 
canvas  that  they  use  in  Paris  for  packing  material.  Any 
town-dweller  would  have  shuddered  at  the  sight  of  his  broken 
sabots,  without  so  much  as  a  little  straw  by  way  of  padding  in 
the  cracks.  As  for  the  blouse  and  trousers,  they  had  reached 
the  stage  when  a  textile  fabric  is  fit  for  nothing  but  the  pulp- 
ing-trough  of  a  paper-mill. 

Blondet,  as  he  gazed  at  the  rustic  Diogenes,  was  convinced 
that  the  typical  peasant  of  old  tapestry,  old  pictures,  and 
carvings  was  not,  as  he  had  hitherto  imagined,  a  purely  fancy 
portrait.  Nor  did  he  utterly  condemn,  as  heretofore,  the  pro- 
ductions of  the  School  of  Ugliness;  he  began  to  see  that  in 
man  the  beautiful  is  but  a  gratifying  exception  to  a  general 
rule,  a  chimerical  vision  in  which  he  struggles  to  believe. 

"I  wonder  what  the  ideas  and  manner  of  life  of  such  a 
human  being  may  be !  What  is  he  thinking  about  ?"  Blondet 
asked  himself,  and  curiosity  seized  upon  him.  "Is  that  my 
fellow-man  ?  We  have  only  our  human  shape  in  common,  and 
yet " 


THE  PEASANTRY  27 

He  looked  at  the  hard  tissues  peculiar  to  those  who  lead  an 
out-of-door  life,  accustomed  to  all  weathers,  and  to  excessive 
heat  and  cold,  and  to  hardships,  in  fact,  of  every  kind,  a 
training  which  turns  the  skin  to  something  like  tanned 
leather,  and  makes  the  sinews  well-nigh  pain-proof,  like  those 
of  the  Arabs  or  Cossacks. 

"That  is  one  of  Fenimore  Cooper's  Kedskins,"  said  Blondet 
to  himself;  "there  is  no  need  to  go  to  America  to  study  the 
savage." 

The  Parisian  was  not  two  paces  away,  but  the  old  man  did 
not  look  round ;  he  stood  and  stared  at  the  opposite  bank  with 
the  fixity  that  glazes  a  Hindoo  fakir's  eyes  and  induces  anchy- 
losis of  every  joint.  This  kind  of  magnetism  is  more  infec- 
tious than  people  think ;  it  was  too  much  for  Blondet,  he 
too  began  at  last  to  stare  into  the  water. 

A  good  quarter  of  an  hour  went  by  in  this  way,,  and  Blondet 
still  found  no  sufficient  motive  for  the  proceeding.  "Well, 
my  good  man,"  he  asked,  "what  is  there  over  yonder  ?" 

"Hush-sh !"  the  other  said,  with  a  sign  to  Blondet  that  he 
must  not  disturb  the  air  with  his  voice.  "You  will  scare 
her " 

"Who?" 

"An  otter,  mister.  If  her  hears  us,  her's  just  the  one  to 
give  us  the  slip  and  get  away  under  water.  There  ain't 
no  need  to  say  that  her  jumped  in  there.  There !  Do  you 
see  the  water  a-bubbling  up?  Oh,  her's  lying  in  wait  for  a 
fish;  but  when  her  tries  to  come  out,  my  boy  will  catch  hold 
of  her.  It's  like  this,  you  see,  an  otter  is  the  rarest  thing.  It 
is  a  scientific  animal  to  catch,  fine  and  delicate  eating,  all 
the  same;  they  will  give  me  ten  francs  for  it  at  the  Aigues, 
seeing  as  the  lady  there  doesn't  eat  meat  of  a  Friday,  and  to- 
morrow is  Friday.  Time  was  when  the  lady  that's  dead  and 
gone  has  paid  me  as  much  as  twenty  francs  for  one,  and  her 
would  let  me  have  the  skin  back  too — Mouche,"  he  called  in 
a  loud  whisper,  "keep  a  good  lookout — 

On  the  other  side  of  this  branch  stream  of  the  Avonne, 
Blondet  saw  a  pair  of  eyes  gleaming  like  a  cat's  eyes  from 

VOL.   IO — 28 


28  THE  PEASANTRY 

under  a  clump  of  alders;  then  he  made  out  the  brown  fore- 
head and  shock  head  of  a  boy  of  twelve  or  thereabouts,  who  was 
lying  there  flat  on  his  stomach;  the  urchin  pointed  out  the 
otter,  with  a  sign  which  indicated  that  he  was  keeping  the 
animal  in  view.  The  consuming  anxiety  of  the  old  man  and 
the  child  got  the  better  of  Blondet;  he  fell  a  willing  victim 
to  the  devouring  demon  of  Sport. 

Now  that  demon  has  two  claws,  called  Hope  and  Curiosity, 
by  which  he  leads  you  whither  he  will. 

"You  sell  the  skin  to  the  hatters,"  the  old  man  went  on. 
"So  fine  it  is  and  soft.  They  make  caps  of  it " 

"Do  you  believe  that,  my  good  man  ?" 

"Of  course,  mister,  you  ought  to  know  a  lot  more  about  it 
than  I  do,  for  all  I  am  seventy  years  old,"  said  the  old  person 
meekly  and  respectfully;  then,  with  unctuous  insinuation — 
"and  you  can  tell  me,  no  doubt,  why  coach-guards  and  inn- 
keepers think  such  a  lot  of  it,  sir  ?" 

Blondet,  that  master  of  irony,  had  his  suspicions ;  the  word 
"scientific"  had  not  escaped  him;  he  remembered  the 
Marechal'de  Eichelieu,  and  fancied  that  this  old  rustic  was 
laughing  at  him,  but  the  simplicity  of  the  man's  manner  and 
stupid  expression  dismissed  the  idea. 

"There  were  plenty  of  otters  to  be  seen  hereabouts  when  I 
was  young,  the  country  suits  them,"  the  good  soul  went  on; 
"but  they  have  hunted  them  down  so  much,  that  if  we  see  a 
tail  of  one  on  'em  once  in  seven  years,  it  is  the  most  you  will 
do.  There's  the  sub-perfect  over  at  Ville-aux-Fayes — you 
know  him,  mister? — He  is  a  nice  young  man,  like  you,  for 
all  he  is  a  Parisian,  and  he  is  fond  of  curiosities.  So,  know- 
ing that  I  was  good  at  catching  otters,  for  I  know  them  as 
well  as  ever  you  know  your  alphabet,  he  just  says  to  me  like 
this,  'Father  Fourchon,  when  you  find  an  otter,  you  bring  it 
to  me,'  says  he,  'and  I'll  pay  you  well  for  it ;  and  if  her  should 
have  white  dots  on  her  back,'  he  says,  'I  would  give  you  thirty 
francs  for  her.'  That  is  what  he  says  to  me  on  the  quay  at 
Ville-aux-Fayes,  and  that's  the  truth :  true  as  I  believe  in 
God  the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Ghost.  There  is  an- 


THE  PEASANTRY  2f 

other  learned  man  over  at  Soulanges,  M.  Gourdon,  our  doc- 
tor he  is,  they  say  he  is  making  a  cabinet  of  natural  history ; 
there  is  not  his  like  in  Dijon,  he  is  the  learnedest  man  in  these 
parts  in  fact,  and  he  would  give  me  a  good  price  for  her !  He 
knows  how  to  stuff  man  and  beast !  And  there's  my  boy  here 
stands  me  out  that  this  one  is  white  all  over! — 'If  that  is 
so/  I  says  to  him,  'the  Lord  A'mighty  have  borne  us  in  mind 
this  morning !'  Look  at  the  water  a-bubbling,  do  you  see  ? — 
Oh !  her's  there. — Her  lives  in  a  kind  of  a  burrow  on  land,  but 
for  all  that,  her'll  stop  under  water  whole  days  together. — 
Ah !  her  heard  you,  mister,  her  is  suspicious,  for  there  ain't 
no  animile  cleverer  than  that  one;  her  is  worse  than  a 
woman." 

"Perhaps  that  is  why  the  otter  is  called  her"  suggested 
Blondet. 

"Lord,  mister,  being  from  Paris  as  you  are,  you  know  bet- 
ter about  it  than  we  do.  But  you  would  have  done  us  a  better 
turn  by  lying  a-bed  of  a  morning,  because — do  you  see 
that  ripple-like  over  yonder? — Her's  getting  away  under- 
neath. .  .  .  Come  along,  Mouche !  Her  has  heard  the 
gentleman,  her  has,  and  her  is  just  the  one  to  keep  us  here 
cooling  our  heels  till  midnight ;  let  us  be  going. — There's  our 
thirty  francs  swimming  away." 

Mouche  got  up,  but  wistfully.  He  was  a  touzle-headed 
youth,  with  a  brown  face,  like  an  angel's  in  some  fifteenth 
century  picture.  To  all  intents  and  purposes,  he  wore 
breeches,  for  his  trousers  ended  at  the  knee  in  a  jagged  fringe 
ornamented  with  thorns  and  dead  leaves.  This  indispensable 
garment  was  secured  to  his  person  by  a  couple  of  strands  of 
tow  by  way  of  braces,  and  a  shirt  of  sacking  (originally  of  the 
same  pattern  as  his  grandsire's  trousers,  but  thickened  by  raw- 
edged  patches)  left  a  sun-burned  chest  exposed  to  view.  In 
the  matter  of  simplicity  Mouche's  clothes  marked  a  distinct 
advance  on  old  Fourchon's  costume. 

"What  good,  simple  souls  they  are  out  here !"  said  Blondet 
to  himself.  "Round  about  Paris  the  work-people  would  cut 
up  rough  if  a  swell  came  and  spoiled  sport."  And  as  he 


30  THE  PEASANTRY 

had  never  set  eyes  on  an  otter,  not  even  in  the  Museum,  he  was 
quite  delighted  with  this  episode  in  his  walk. 

"Come,  now,"  he  began,  feeling  touched,  for  the  old  man 
was  going  away  without  asking  for  anything,  "you  say  that 
you  are  an  expert  otter-hunter. — If  you  are  sure  that  the  otter 
is  there " 

Mouche,  on  the  opposite  bank,  pointed  to  the  air-bubbles 
rising  to  the  surface  of  the  Avonne,  to  die  away  in  eddies  in 
the  middle  of  the  pool. 

"Her  has  gone  back  again,"  said  old  Fourchon;  "her  has 
been  to  draw  a  breath  of  air,  the  slut !  It  is  her  as  has  made 
that  fuss  there.  How  do  her  manage  to  breathe  under  water  ? 
But  the  thing's  so  cunning,  it  laughs  at  science." 

"Very  well,"  said  Blondet,  deciding  that  the  last  pleasantry 
was  a  current  bucolic  witticism,  and  no  product  of  the  brain 
of  the  individual  before  him ;  "stop  and  catch  the  otter." 

"And  how  about  our  day's  work,  mine  and  Mouche's  ?" 

"What  is  a  day's  work  ?" 

"For  the  two  of  us,  me  and  my  apprentice  ?  .  .  .  Five 

francs "  said  the  old  man,  looking  Blondet  in  the  eyes 

with  a  hesitation  which  plainly  said  that  this  was  a  prodigious 
overstatement. 

The  journalist  took  some  coins  from  his  pocket,  saying, 
"Here  are  ten  francs  for  you,  and  you  shall  have  at  least  as 
much  again  for  the  otter." 

"Her'll  be  cheap  to  you  at  that,  if  her  has  white  dots  on 
her  back,  for  the  sub-perfect  told  me  that  our  museum  has 
only  one  of  that  sort. — And  he  knows  a  good  deal,  all  the 
same,  does  our  sub-perfect,  he  is  no  fool.  If  I  go  after  otters, 
Master  des  Lupeaulx  is  after  Master  Gaub.ertin's  daughter, 
who  has  a  fine  white  dot  on  her  back. — Stay,  mister,  no  offence 
to  you,  but  you  go  and  beat  up  the  water  by  that  stone  yon- 
der in  the  Avonne.  When  we  have  driven  out  the  otter,  her 
will  come  down  with  the  stream,  for  that  is  a  trick  the  ani- 
mals have;  them'll  go  up  stream  to  fish,  and  when  they  have 
as  much  as  they  can  carry,  they  come  down  to  their  burrow ; 
they  know  it's  easier  going  down  stream.  Didn't  I  tell  you 


THE  PEASANTRY  31 

that  they  are  cunning !  If  I  had  learned  cunning  in  their 
school,  I  should  be  living  like  a  gentleman  at  this  day.  I 
found  out  too  late  that  you  have  to  get  up  early  in  the  morn- 
ing to  make  headway  up  stream  and  get  the  first  chance  at 
the  booty.  There  was  a  spell  cast  over  me  when  I  was  born, 
in  fact.  Perhaps  the  three  of  us  together  will  be  too  clever 
for  the  otter." 

"And  how,  old  necromancer?" 

"Lord,  sir,  we  peasants  are  such  stupid  animals  ourselves, 
that  we  come  at  last  to  understand  the  animals.  This  is  what 
we  will  do.  When  the  otter  turns  to  go  home,  we  will  scare 
her  here,  and  you  will  scare  her  there,  and  scared  of  both 
sides,  her'll  make  a  dash  for  the  bank.  If  her  takes  to  the 
land,  it  is  all  over  with  her.  The  thing  can't  walk,  it's  made 
to  swim,  with  its  goose-feet.  Oh !  you  will  have  some  fun, 
for  it  is  a  regular  double  game — you  fish  and  hunt  at  the 
same  time.  The  General  at  the  Aigues,  where  you  are  stay- 
ing, came  back  three  times  running,  he  took  such  a  fancy  to 
the  sport." 

Blondet  obediently  hopped  from  stone  to  stone  till  he 
reached  the  middle  of  the  Avonne,  where  he  took  his  stand, 
duly  provided  with  a  green  branch,  which  the  old  otter-hunter 
cut  for  him,  ready  to  whip  the  stream  at  the  word  of  com- 
mand. 

"Yes,  just  there,  mister,"  and  there  Blondet  remained,  un- 
conscious of  the  flight  of  time,  for  every  moment  the  old  man's 
gestures  kept  him  on  the  lookout  for  a  successful  issue,  and 
time  never  passes  more  quickly  than  when  every  faculty  is 
on  the  alert  in  expectation  of  energetic  action  to  succeed  to 
the  profound  silence  of  lying  in  wait. 

"Daddy  Fourchon,"  the  boy  whispered,  when  he  was  alone 
with  the  old  man,  "there  really  be  an  otter  there " 

"Do  you  see  her?" 

"There  her  is !" 

The  old  man  was  dumfounded.  He  distinctly  saw  the 
brown  skin  of  an  otter  swimming  along  under  the  water. 

"Her  is  coming  along  tow'rds  me,"  said  the  little  fellow. 


32  THE  PEASANTS  Y 

"Fetch  her  a  slap  on  the  head,  and  jump  in  and  hold  her 
down  at  the  bottom,  and  don't  let  her  go " 

Mouche  dived  into  the  Avonne  like  a  scared  frog. 

"Quick,  quick !  'mister,"  old  Fourchon  shouted,  as  he  like- 
wise jumped  into  the  Avonne  (leaving  his  sabots  on  the 
bank).  "Just  give  her  a  scare!  There!  look — her  is  swim- 
ming tow'rds  you !" 

The  old  man  splashed  along  through  the  water  to  Blondet, 
shouting  with  the  gravity  that  rustics  can  preserve  through 
the  keenest  sense  of  fun. 

"Look,  do  you  see  her,  along  of  those  rocks."  Blondet,  pur- 
posely placed  so  that  the  sun  shone  into  his  eyes,  thrashed  the 
water  in  all  good  faith. 

"There!  there!  nearer  the  rocks!"  shouted  old  Fourchon, 
"that  is  where  her  hole  is  to  your  left."  Carried  away  by 
vexation,  excited  by  the  long  suspense,  Blondet  took  an  im- 
promptu footbath,  slipping  off  the  stones  into  the  water. 

"Hold  on !  hold  on  !  mister,  you  have  got  her. — Oh,  heaven 
and  earth !  there  she  goes,  right  between  your  legs !  Her  is 
off! — Her  is  off!"  cried  the  old  man  in  desperation.  And 
like  one  possessed  with  the  fury  of  the  chase,  he  splashed 
across  till  he  confronted  Blondet. 

"  'Twas  your  doing  that  we  lost  her,"  old  Fourchon  con- 
tinued; Blondet  held  out  a  hand,  and  he  emerged  from  the 
water  like  a  Triton — a  vanquished  Triton.  "Her  is  there 
under  the  rock,  the  wench ! — Her  dropped  her  fish,"  he  added, 
pointing  to  something  floating  down  the  stream  some  distance 
away.  "Anyhow,  we  shall  have  the  tench,  for  a  tench  it 

As  he  spoke  they  saw  a  liveried  servant  on  horseback,  gal- 
loping along  the  Conches  road,  holding  a  second  horse  by  the 
bridle. 

"There!  it  looks  as  if  the  servants  from  the  chateau  were 
looking  for  you,"  he  went  on.  "If  you  want  to  get  back  across 
the  river,  I  will  lend  you  a  hand.  Oh !  I  would  as  soon  have 
a  soaking  as  not,  it  saves  you  the  trouble  of  washing  your 
things.'" 


THE  PEASANTRY  33 

"And  how  about  catching  cold  ?"  asked  Blondet. 

"Ah,  indeed !  Don't  you  see  that  the  sun  has  browned  our 
shanks  like  an  old  pensioner's  tobacco  pipe.  Lean  on  me,  mis- 
ter. You  are  from  Paris,  you  don't  know  how  to  get  foothold 
on  our  rocks,  for  so  many  things  as  you  know.  If  you  stop 
here  awhile,  you  will  learn  a  sight  of  things  out  of  the  book 
of  nature,  you  that  write  the  news  in  the  papers." 

Blondet,  arrived  on  the  opposite  banks,  encountered  the 
footman  Charles. 

"Ah,  sir,"  cried  the  man,  "you  cannot  imagine  madame's 
anxiety  when  she  heard  that  you  had  gone  out  through  the 
Conches  gate.  She  thinks  that  you  are  drowned.  Three  times 
they  rang  the  second  bell  for  breakfast  with  might  and  main, 
after  shouting  all  over  the  park,  and  M.  le  Cure  is  still  look- 
ing for  you  there."  , 

"Why,  what  time  is  it,  Charles  ?" 

"A  quarter  to  twelve !" 

"Help  me  to  mount " 

"Perhaps  monsieur  has  been  helping  to  hunt  old  Fourchon's 
otter,"  said  the  man,  as  he  noticed  the  water  dripping  from 
Blondet's  boots  and  trousers. 

That  question  opened  the  journalist's  eyes. 

"Not  a  word  about  it,  Charles,  and  I  will  bear  you  in 
mind,"  cried  he. 

"Oh,  Lord  love  you,  sir,  M.  le  Comte  himself  was  taken  in 
with  old  Fourchon's  otter.  As  soon  as  any  one  new  to  the 
place  comes  to  the  Aigues,  old  Fourchon  is  on  the  lookout  for 
him ;  and  if  the  town  gentleman  goes  to  see  the  springs  of  the 
Avonne,  the  old  boy  sells  him  his  otter.  He  keeps  it  up  so 
well,  that  M.  le  Comte  went  back  three  times  and  paid  him 
six  days'  wages  while  they  sat  and  watched  the  water  flow." 

"And  I  used  to  think  that  I  had  seen  the  greatest  comedians 
t)f  the  day  in  Potier  and  the  younger  Baptiste,"  said  Blondet 
to  himself,  "and  what  are  they  compared  with  this  beggar?" 

"Oh !  he  is  quite  up  to  that  game,  is  old  Fourchon,"  Charles 
pursued.  "And  he  has  another  string  to  his  bow,  for  he  had 
himself  put  down  on  the  register  as  a  ropemaker.  He  has  his 


34  *     THE  PEASANTRY 

ropewalk  along  the  wall  outside  the  Blangy  gate.  If  yon 
take  it  into  your  head  to  meddle  with  his  cord,  he  comes 
round  you  so  cleverly,  that  you  begin  to  want  to  turn  the 
wheel  and  make  a  bit  of  rope  yourself,  and  then  he  asks  you 
for  a  prentice's  premium.  Madame  was  caught  that  way,  and 
gave  him  twenty  francs.  He  is  the  king  of  sly-boots,"  said 
Charles,  picking  his  words. 

The  man's  gossip  gave  Blondet  some  opportunity  of  reflect- 
ing upon  the  profound  astuteness  of  the  peasantry;  he  also 
recalled  much  that  had  been  said  by  his  father  the  judge  of 
Alengon.  Then  as  all  the  malice  lurking  beneath  old  Four- 
chon's  simplicity  came  up  in  his  mind,  Charles'  confidences 
put  those  remarks  in  a  new  light;  and  he  confessed  to  him- 
self that  he  had  been  gulled  by  the  old  Burgundian  beggar. 

"You  would  not  believe,  sir,  how  wide  awake  you  have  to 
be  in  the  country,  and  here  of  all  places,  for  the  General  is 
not  very  popular " 

"Why  so?" 

"Lord,  I  do  not  know,"  said  Charles,  with  the  stupid  look 
a  servant  can  assume  to  screen  a  refusal  to  his  betters,  a  look 
which  gave  Blondet  plenty  of  food  for  reflection. 

"So  here  you  are,  runaway !"  said  the  General,  coming  out 
upon  the  steps  at  the  sound  of  horse  hoofs. — "Here  he  is ! 
Set  your  mind  at  rest,"  he  called  to  his  wife,  hearing  her  pat- 
tering footsteps. — "Now  we  are  all  here  but  the  Abbe 
Brossette.  Go  and  look  for  him,  Charles,"  he  said,  turning 
to  the  servant. 

Ill 

THE  TAVERN 

THE  Blangy  gate  dated  from  Bouret's  time.  It  consisted  of 
two  pilasters  with  "rustic"  bossages,  each  surmounted  by  a 
rampant  greyhound  holding  a  scutcheon  between  its  fore- 
p;i\vs.  The  steward's  house  was  so  close  to  the  gate  that  the 
great  financier  had  no  occasion  to  build  another  for  a  lodge- 


THE  PEASANTRY  35 

keeper.  An  imposing  iron  grating,  of  the  same  style  as  those 
made  in  Buffon's  time  for  the  Jardin  des  Plantes,  opened  out 
upon  the  extreme  end  of  the  paved  way  which  led  to  the  cross- 
road. Formerly  the  Aigues  had  combined  with  the  house  of 
Soulanges  to  maintain  this  local  road  which  connected 
Conches  and  Cerneux  and  Blangy  and  Soulanges  with  Ville- 
aux-Fayes,  as  by  a  flowery  chain,  so  many  are  the  little 
houses  covered  with  roses  and  honeysuckle  and  climbing 
plants,  that  are  dotted  about  among  the  hedge-enclosed  do- 
mains along  its  course. 

Just  outside,  along  a  trim  wall,  stood  a  rotten  post,  a  ram- 
shackle wheel  and  heckle-boards,  the  entire  "plant"  of  a  vil- 
lage ropemaker.  Further,  the  wall  gave  place  to  a  ha-ha 
fence,  so  that  the  chateau  commanded  a  view  of  the  valley  as 
far  as  Soulanges,  and  even  further. 

About  half-past  twelve  o'clock,  while  Blondet  was  taking 
his  place  at  table  opposite  the  Abbe  Brossette,  and  receiving 
a  flattering  scolding  from  the  Countess,  old  Fourchon  and 
Mouche  arrived  at  their  ropewalk.  Under  pretext  of  making 
rope,  old  Fourchon  could  keep  an  eye  upon  the  house  and 
spy  the  movements  of  the  gentry.  Indeed,  a  shutter  could 
not  move,  no  two  persons  could  stroll  away  together,  no 
trifling  incident  could  take  place  at  the  chateau  but  the  old 
man  knew  of  it.  He  had  only  taken  up  his  position  there 
within  the  last  three  years,  and  neither  keepers,  nor  servants, 
nor  the  family  had  noticed  a  circumstance  so  apparently  in- 
significant. 

"Go  round  to  the  Avonne  gate  while  I  put  up  our  tackle," 
said  old  Fourchon ;  "and  when  you  have  chattered  about  this, 
they  will  come  to  look  for  me  at  the  Grand-I-Vert.  I  will 
have  a  drop  of  something  there;  it  is  thirsty  work  stopping 
in  the  water  like  that.  If  you  do  just  as  I  have  been  telling 
you,  you  will  get  a  good  breakfast  out  of  them ;  try  to  speak 
with  the  Countess,  and  go  on  about  me,  so  that  they  may  take 
it  into  their  heads  to  give  me  a  sermon,  eh  !  There  will  be  a 
glass  or  two  of  good  wine  to  tipple  down." 

With    these    final    instructions,    which,    to    judge    from 


36  THE  PEASANTRY 

Mouche's  sly  looks,  were  almost  superfluous,  the  old  rope- 
maker  tucked  his  otter  under  his  arm  and  disappeared  down 
the  road. 

Halfway  between  this  picturesque  gateway  and  the  village, 
at  the  time  of  Emile  Blondet's  visit,  stood  a  house  such  as 
may  be  seen  anywhere  in  France  in  districts  where  stone  is 
scarce.  Brickbats  collected  from  all  sources,  and  great  flints 
roughly  set  in  stiff  clay,  made  fairly  solid  walls,  though  the 
weather  had  eaten  them  away.  Stout  tree  boughs  upheld  a 
roof  thatched  with  straw  and  rushes ;  the  clumsy  shutters  and 
the  door,  like  everything  else  about  the  hovel,  were  either 
lucky  "finds"  or  had  been  extorted  by  hard  begging. 

The  peasant  brings  to  the  making  of  his  dwelling  the  same 
instinct  that  a  wild  creature  displays  in  the  making  of  its 
nest  or  burrow;  this  instinct  shone  conspicuously  in  the  ar- 
rangements of  the  whole  cabin.  To  begin  with,  the  door  and 
window  were  on  the  north  side,  and  the  house,  situated  on  a 
little  knoll  in  the  stoniest  part  of  the  vineyard,  should  have 
been  healthy  enough.  It  was  reached  by  three  steps,  in- 
geniously contrived  out  of  stakes  and  planks,  and  filled  in 
with  small  stones.  The  rain-water  very  soon  flowed  away; 
and  as  in  Burgundy  rain  seldom  comes  from  the  north,  the 
foundations,  flimsy  though  they  were,  did  not  rot  with  the 
damp.  At  the  foot  of  the  steps  some  rustic  palings  extended 
along  the  footpath,  till  they  were  lost  to  sight  in  a  hedge  of 
hawthorn  and  wild-brier.  A  collection  of  rough  benches  and 
rickety  tables  invited  passers-by  to  seat  themselves  in  the 
shade  of  the  trellised  vine  which  covered  the  whole  space  be- 
tween the  hut  and  the  road.  In  the  enclosed  garden,  on  the 
top  of  the  knoll,  grew  roses,  and  pinks,  and  violets,  and  all 
the  flowers  which  cost  nothing;  honeysuckle  and  jessamine 
trails  clung  about  a  roof  heavy  already  with  moss,  in  spite  of 
its  recent  date. 

The  owner  had  set  up  a  "lean-to"  cowshed  against  the  right 
wall  of  the  house.  It  was  a  crazy  wooden  erection,  with  a 
sort  of  yard  of  beaten  earth  in  front  of  it,  where  a  huge  dung- 
hill stood  conspicuous  in  one  corner.  An  outhouse  at  the 


THE  PEASANTRY  37 

back,  a  thatched  roof,  supported  by  two  tree  trunks,  did  duty 
as  a  shed  for  vinedressers'  tools,  empty  casks,  and  heaps  of 
faggots  piled  about  the  projecting  boss  of  the  oven,  which  in 
peasants'  cottages  almost  invariably  opens  just  under  the 
chimney  shelf. 

About  an  acre  of  land  belonged  to  the  house,  a  croft  en- 
closed with  a  quick-set  hedge,  full  of  vines,  tended  as  a  peas- 
ant's vines  are  tended,  so  well  manured,  layered,  and  trenched, 
that  they  came  into  leaf  earlier  than  any  others  for  three 
leagues  round.  The  slender  tops  of  a  few  fruit-trees,  almonds, 
and  plums,  and  apricots,  appeared  here  and  there  above  the 
hedge.  Potatoes  or  beans  were  usually  growing  among  the 
vine  stems.  Another  small  wedge-shaped  bit  of  land  behind 
the  yard  and  in  the  direction  of  the  village  was  low  and 
damp  enough  to  grow  the  cabbages  and  onions  dear  to  the 
laborer.  A  latticed  gate  divided  it  off  from  the  yard,  through 
which  the  cows  passed,  trampling  and  manuring  the  earth. 

Inside  the  house,  the  two  rooms  on  the  ground  floor  opened 
on  to  the  vineyard ;  on  that  side  of  it,  a  rough  wooden  stair- 
case ran  up  the  outer  wall  under  the  thatch  to  a  garret  lighted 
by  a  round  window  under  the  roof.  Beneath  these  rustic  steps 
a  cellar,  built  of  Burgundian  bricks,  contained  a  few  hogs- 
heads of  wine. 

A  peasant's  batterie  de  cuisine  usually  consists  of  a  couple 
of  cooking-pots,  a  frying-pan,  and  an  iron  kettle ;  but  in  this 
cottage,  by  way  of  exception  to  the  rule,  there  were  two 
huge  saucepans  hanging  up  under  the  mantel-shelf  above  a 
small  portable  stove.  But  in  spite  of  this  sign  of  comfort, 
the  furniture  generally  was  in  keeping  with  the  outside  of  the 
house.  An  earthen  jar  held  the  water;  pewter  spoons  and 
wooden  ladles  did  duty  for  silver  plate ;  and  the  crockery  ware 
was  cracked,  riveted,  brown  without  and  white  within.  A 
few  deal  chairs  stood  about  a  solid  table,  and  the  floor  was 
of  beaten  earth.  The  walls  were  whitewashed  once  in  five 
years,  so  were  the  slender  rafters  of  the  ceiling,  where  bacon 
and  ropes  of  onions,  and  bunches  of  candles,  hung  among  the 
bags  in  which  the  peasant  keeps  his  seeds.  Beside  the  bread- 


38  THE  PEASANTRY 

hutch  stood  an  old  cupboard  of  black  walnut  wood,  containing 
such  linen  as  the  inmates  of  the  cabin  possessed — the  spare 
garments  and  the  Sunday  clothes  of  the  whole  family. 

An  antiquated  gun  shone  on  the  wall  above  the  mantel- 
shelf, a  poacher's  weapon,  for  which  you  would  not  have  given 
five  francs.  The  gun-stock  was  almost  charred,  nor  was  there 
any  appearance  about  the  barrel,  which  looked  as  if  it  never 
was  cleaned.  Perhaps  you  may  think  that  as  the  gate  stood 
open  day  and  night,  and  the  cabin  door  boasted  no  fasten- 
ing but  a  latch,  nothing  more  efficient  in  the  way  of  firearms 
was  needed,  and  ask  what  earthly  use  such  a  weapon  might  be. 
But  in  the  first  place,  rough  though  the  woodwork  was,  the 
barrel  had  been  carefully  selected;  it  had  belonged  to  a  gun 
of  price,  once  given,  no  doubt,  to  some  gamekeeper.  And  the 
owner  of  the  gun  never  missed  a  shot;  between  him  and  his 
weapon  there  was  the  intimate  understanding  that  exists  be- 
tween the  craftsman  and  his  tool.  If  the  muzzle  must  be 
pointed  a  millimetre  above  or  below  the  mark,  the  poacher 
knows  and  obeys  the  rule  accurately,  and  is  never  out  in  his 
reckoning.  And  an  officer  of  artillery  would  see  that  all  the 
essentials  were  in  good  working  order,  nor  more  nor  less. 
Into  everything  that  the  peasant  appropriates  to  his  uses 
he  puts  the  exact  amount  of  energy  required  to  attain  the 
desired  end — the  necessary  labor,  and  nothing  more.  He  has 
not  the  least  idea  of  finish,  but  he  is  a  perfect  judge  of  the 
necessities  in  everything ;  he  knows  all  the  degrees  in  the  scale 
of  energy;  and  if  he  works  for  a  master,  knows  exactly  how  to 
do  the  least  possible  amount  of  work  for  the  utmost  possible 
pay.  Finally,  this  very  gun  played  an  important  part  in  the 
family  life,  as  shall  presently  be  shown. 

Have  you  realized  all  the  countless  details  about  this  hovel, 
five  hundred  paces  from  the  picturesque  park  gates?  Can 
you  picture  it  squatting  there  like  a  beggar  by  a  palace  wall  ? 
Well,  then,  beneath  all  its  idyllic  rusticity,  the  velvet  mosses 
of  its  roof,  the  cackling  hens,  the  wallowing  pig,  the  lowing 
heifer,  and  every  sight  and  sound  there  lies  an  ugly  signifi- 
cance. 


THE  PEASANTRY  39 

A  high  pole  was  set  up  by  the  front  gate,  to  exhibit  to 
public  view  a  bush  made  up  of  three  withered  branches  of  pine 
and  oak,  tied  in  a  bunch  by  a  bit  of  rag.  Above  the  door 
stood  a  signboard  about  two  feet  square,  on  which  an  itinerant 
artist  had  painted  (for  a  breakfast)  a  huge  green  letter  I  on 
a  white  field — a  pun  in  ten  letters  for  those  who  could  read — 
the  Grand-I-Vert  (hiver).  A  vulgar  gaudy-colored  adver- 
tisement on  the  left-hand  side  of  the  door  announced  "Good 
March  Beer,"  a  crude  representation  of  a  woman  with  an  ex- 
aggeratedly low-necked  dress,  and  a  hussar,  in  uniform,  strut- 
ting on  either  side  of  a  foaming  pint  pot.  In  spite  of  the 
scent  of  flowers  and  the  country  air,  a  stale  reek  of  wine  and 
eatables  always  clung  about  the  cabin,  the  same  odor  that  lies 
in  wait  for  you  as  you  pass  by  some  pothouse  in  a  low  quar- 
ter of  Paris. 

The  place  you  know.  Now,  behold  its  inmates.  Their  his- 
tory contains  more  than  one  lesson  for  the  philanthropist. 

The  owner  of  the  Grand-I-Vert,  one  Frangois  Tonsard,  is 
not  unworthy  of  the  attention  of  philosophers,  in  that  he 
contrived  to  solve  the  problem  of  how  to  lead  a  life  of  com- 
bined industry  and  idleness,  in  such  a  way  that  his  idleness 
was  highly  profitable  to  himself,  while  no  one  was  a  penny 
the  better  for  his  industry. 

He  was  a  jack-of-all-trades.  He  could  dig,  but  only  on  his 
own  land.  He  could  also  do  hedging  and  ditching,  bark  trees 
or  fell  them,  for  other  people,  for  in  all  these  occupations  the 
master  is  at  the  mercy  of  the  man.  Tonsard  owed  his  bit  of 
land  to  Mile.  Laguerre's  generosity.  While  a  mere  lad  he  did 
a  day's  work  now  and  again  for  the  gardener  at  the  chateau, 
for  he  had  not  his  match  at  clipping  trees  in  garden  alleys, 
and  trimmed  hornbeams,  and  thorn-trees,  and  horse-chest- 
nuts to  admiration.  His  name  Tonsard — literally,  "the  clip- 
per"— is  a  sufficient  indication  of  an  aptitude  descended  from 
father  to  son,  and  in  most  country-places  such  monopolies  are 
secured  and  maintained  with  as  much  cunning  as  ever  city 
merchants  use  to  the  same  end. 

One  day  Mile.  Laguerre,  strolling  in  her  garden,  overheard 


40  THE  PEASANTRY 

Tonsard,  a  fine  strapping  young  fellow,  saying,  "All  I  want  to 
live,  and  live  happily  too,  is  an  acre  of  land !"  Whereupon 
the  good-natured  creature,  accustomed  to  make  others  happy, 
bestowed  on  Tonsard  that  bit  of  vineyard  near  the  Blangy 
gate  in  return  for  a  hundred  days'  work  (a  piece  of  delicacy 
scantily  appreciated),  and  allowed  him  to  take  up  his  quarters 
at  the  Aigues,  where  he  lived  among  the  servants,  who 
thought  him  the  best  of  good  fellows  in  Burgundy. 

"Poor  Tonsard"  (as  everybody  called  him)  did  about 
thirty  days'  work  out  of  a  hundred,  the  rest  of  the  time  he 
spent  in  laughing  and  flirting  with  the  maids  at  the  house, 
and  more  particularly  with  Mile.  Cochet,  Madame's  own 
woman,  though  she  was  as  ugly  as  a  charming  actress'  maid 
is  sure  to  be.  A  laugh,  with  Mile.  Cochet,  was  something  so 
significant,  that  Soudry  (the  happy  police  sergeant  of 
Blondet's  letter)  still  gave  Tonsard  black  looks  after  five-and- 
twenty  years.  The  walnut  wood  press  and  the  four-post  bed- 
stead with  curtains,  which  adorned  the  bedroom  at  the  Grand- 
l-Vert,  were,  no  doubt,  the  fruit  of  one  of  those  titterings. 

Once  in  possession  of  his  bit  of  land,  Tonsard  replied  to  the 
first  person  who  remarked  that  "Madame  had  given  it  to 
him." 

"By  George,  it's  mine !  honestly  bought  and  honestly  paid 
for.  Do  the  bourgeois  ever  give  you  anything  for  nothing? 
And  a  hundred  days'  work  is  nothing,  is  it?  That  has  cost 
me  three  hundred  francs  as  it  is,  and  the  soil  is  all  stones !" 

The  talk  never  went  beyond  the  circle  of  the  peasantry. 

Tonsard  next  built  the  house  himself.  Finding  the  ma- 
terials here  and  there,  asking  this  one  and  that  to  do  a  hand's 
turn  for  him,  pilfering  odds  and  ends  from  the  chateau,  or 
asking,  and  invariably  having  what  he  asked  for.  A  rickety 
gateway  pulled  down  to  be  removed  found  its  way  to  his  cow- 
shed. The  window  came  from  an  old  greenhouse.  The  hut, 
to  prove  so  fatal  to  the  chateau,  was  built  up  of  material  from 
the  chateau. 

Tonsard  escaped  military  service,  thanks  to  Gaubertin, 
Mile.  Laguerre's  steward.  Gaubertin's  father  was  the  public 


THE  PEASANTRY  41 

prosecutor  of  the  department,  and  Gaubertin  could  refuse 
Mile.  Cochet  nothing.  When  the  house  was  finished  and  the 
vines  in  full  bearing,  Tonsard  took  unto  himself  a  wife.  A 
bachelor  of  three-and-twenty  on  a  friendly  footing  at  the 
Aigues,  the  good-for-nothing  to  whom  Madame  had  given  an 
acre  of  ground  had  every  appearance  of  being  a  hard  worker, 
and  he  had  the  wit  to  make  the  most  of  his  negative  virtues. 
His  'Wife  was  the  daughter  of  a  tenant  on  the  Eonquerolles 
estate  on  the  other  side  of  the  Forest  of  the  Aigues. 

This  farmer  farmed  half  a  farm,  which  was  going  to  wreck 
and  ruin  in  his  hands  for  want  of  a  housewife.  The  incon- 
solable widower  had  tried  to  drown  his  cares  in  drink,  in  the 
English  fashion ;  but  time  went  on,  he  thought  no  more  upon 
his  loss,  and  at  last  found  himself  wedded  to  the  winecask, 
in  the  jocular  village  phrase.  Then  in  no  time  the  father-in- 
law  ceased  to  be  a  farmer,  and  became  a  laborer,  an  idle,  mis- 
chief-making, quarrelsome  sot,  sticking  at  nothing,  like  most 
men  of  his  class  who  fall  from  a  comparatively  comfortable 
position  into  poverty.  He  could  read  and  write,  his  educa- 
tion and  practical  knowledge  raised  him  above  the  level  of  the 
ordinary  laborer,  though  his  bad  habits  dragged  him  down 
to  the  level  of  the  tramp;  and,  as  we  have  seen,  he  had  just 
been  a  match  for  one  of  the  cleverest  men  in  Paris  in  a  Bu- 
colic overlooked  by  Virgil. 

At  first  they  made  old  Fourchon  the  village  schoolmaster 
at  Blangy,  but  he  lost  his  place,  partly  by  misconduct,  partly 
by  his  peculiar  views  of*  primary  education.  His  pupils  made 
more  progress  in  the  art  of  making  paper  boats  and  chickens 
out  of  the  pages  of  their  ABC  books  than  in  reading ;  and  his 
homilies  on  pilfering  orchards  were  strangely  like  lessons 
on  the  best  manner  of  scaling  walls.  They  still  quote  one  of 
his  sayings  at  Soulanges,  an  answer  given  to  some  urchin 
who  came  late  with  the  excuse,  "Lord,  sir,  I  had  to  take  our 
'orse  to  the  water." 

"jfforse  we  say,  ye  dunder'ead." 

From  a  schoolmaster  he  became  postman.  This  employ- 
ment, which  is  as  good  as  a  pension  to  many  an  old  soldier, 


42  THE  PEASANTRY 

got  Daddy  Fourchon  into  trouble  every  day  of  his  life.  Some- 
times he  left  the  letters  in  a  tavern,  sometimes  he  forgot  to 
deliver  them,  sometimes  he  kept  them  in,  his  pocket.  When 
his  wits  were  flustered  with  liquor,  he  would  leave  the  corre- 
spondence of  one  commune  in  another;  when  he  was  sober 
he  read  the  letters.  He  was  promptly  dismissed.  Having 
nothing  to  hope  in  the  way  of  a  Government  appointment, 
Daddy  Fourchon  at  length  turned  his  attention  to  manufac- 
ture. The  very  poorest  do  something  in  country  places,  and 
one  and  all,  if  they  do  not  make  an  honest  livelihood,  make 
a  pretence  of  earning  it. 

At  the  age  of  sixty-eight  Fourchon  took  to  ropemaking  on 
a  small  scale,  that  being  a  business  in  which  the  least  possible 
amount  of  capital  is  needed.  The  first  wall  you  find  (as  has 
been  seen)  is  a  sufficient  workshop,  ten  francs  will  more  than 
pay  for  your  machinery ;  and  the  apprentice,  like  his  master, 
sleeps  in  a  barn,  and  lives  on  what  he  can  pick  up.  So  shall 
you  evade  the  rapacity  of  the  law  which  vexes  the  poor  with 
door  and  window  tax.  The  raw  material  you  borrow,  and  re- 
turn a  manufactured  article. 

But  Daddy  Fourchon,  and  Mouche  his  apprentice  (the 
natural  son  of  one  of  his  natural  daughters),  had  another 
resource,  in  fact,,  their  mainstay  and  support  in  otter-hunt- 
ing, to  say  nothing  of  breakfasts  and  dinners  given  to  the 
pair  by  illiterate  folk  who  availed  themselves  of  Daddy 
Fourchon's  talents  when  a  letter  must  be  written  or  a  bill 
made  out.  Finally,  the  old  man  could  play  the  clarionet,  and 
in  the  company  of  a  crony,  the  fiddler  of  Soulanges,  Ver- 
michel  by  name,  figured  at  village  weddings  and  great  balls 
at  the  Tivoli  at  Soula"nges. 

Vermichel's  real  name  was  Michel  Vert ;  but  the  transposi- 
tion was  so  much  in  use,  that  Brunet,  clerk  of  the  justice  of 
the  peace  at  Soulanges,  described  him  in  all  documents  as 
"Michel-Jean-Jerome  Vert,  otherwise  Vermichel,  witness." 

Daddy  Fourchon  had  been  of  use  in  past  times  to  Ver- 
michel, a  fiddler  held  in  high  esteem  by  the  old  Burgundian 
Regiment ;  and  Vermichel  out  of  gratitude  for  those  services 


THE  PEASANTRY  43 

had  procured  for  his  friend  the  post  of  practitioner — (the 
privilege  of  appearing  before  the  justice  of  the  peace  in  the 
interests  of  this  or  that  person),  for  which  any  man  who  can 
sign  his  name  is  eligible  in  out-of-the-way  places.  So  Daddy 
Fourchon's  signature  was  appended  to  any  judicial  documents 
drawn  up  by  the  Sieur  Brunet  in  the  communes  of  Cerneux, 
Conches,  and  Blangy;  and  the  names  of  Vermichel  and 
Fourchon,  bound  together  by  a  friendship  cemented  by 
twenty  years  of  hobnobbing,  seemed  almost  like  the  style  of  a 
firm. 

Mouche  and  Fourchon,  united  as  closely  each  to  each  by 
malpractices  as  Mentor  and  Telemachus  of  old  by  virtues, 
traveled  like  their  anti-types  in  search  of  bread;  panis  an- 
gelorum,  the  only  words  of  Latin  that  linger  yet  in  the  memo- 
ries of  gray-headed  villagers.  The  pair  negotiated  the  scraps 
at  Tonsard's  tavern,  or  at  the  great  houses  roundabout;  for 
between  them  in  their  busiest  and  most  prosperous  years  their 
achievement  scarcely  exceeded  an  average  of  some  seven  hun- 
dred yards  of  rope.  In  the  first  place,  no  tradesman  for  sixty 
miles  round  would  have  trusted  either  of  them  with  a  hank 
of  tow,  for  this  venerable  person  (anticipating  the  miracles 
of  modern  science)  knew  but  too  well  how  to  transform  the 
hemp  into  the  divine  juice  of  the  grape.  And  in  the  second 
place,  besides  being  private  secretary  to  three  communes, 
Fourchon  appeared  for  plaintiff  or  defendant  before  the  jus- 
tice of  the  peace,  and  performed  at  merrymakings  upon  the 
clarionet — his  public  duties  were  the  ruin  of  his  trade,  he 
said. 

So  Tonsard's  hopes  so  fondly  cherished  were  nipped  in  the 
bud.  Those  comfortable  additions  to  his  property  would 
never  be  his,  and  the  ordinary  luck  of  life  confronted  a  lazy 
son-in-law  with  another  do-nothing  in  the  shape  of  his  wife's 
father.  And  things  wera  bound  to  do  much  the  worse  in  that 
La  Tonsard,  a  tall  and  shapely  woman  with  a  kind  of  broad- 
blown  comeliness,  showed  no  sort  of  taste  for  field  work.  Ton- 
sard bore  his  wife  a  grudge  for  her  father's  bankruptcy,  and 
treated  her  badly,  taking  his  revenge  after  the  fashion 

VOL.   IO — 29 


44  THE  PEASANTRY 

familiar  to  a  class  that  sees  the  effects,  but  seldom  traces  the 
cause. 

The  wife,  finding  her  bondage  hard,  sought  alleviations. 
She  took  advantage  of  Tonsard's  vices  to  govern  him.  He  was 
an  ease-loving  glutton,  so  she  encouraged  him  in  idleness  and 
gluttony.  She  managed  to  secure  for  him  the  goodwill  of  the 
servants  at  the  chateau,  and  he,  satisfied  with  the  results5 
did  not  grumble  at  the  means.  He  troubled  himself  uncom- 
monly little  about  his  wife's  doings,  so  long  as  she  did  all 
that  he  required  of  her,  a  tacit  understanding  in  which  every 
second  married  couple  lives.  The  tavern  was  La  Tonsard's 
next  invention,  and  her  first  customers  were  the  servants, 
gamekeepers,  and  prickers  from  the  Aigues. 

Gaubertin,  Mile.  Laguerre's  agent,  was  one  of  La  belle  Ton- 
sard's earliest  patrons;  he  let  her  have  a  few  hogsheads  of 
good  wine  to  attract  custom.  The  effect  of  these  presents, 
periodically  renewed  so  long  as  Gaubertin  remained  a 
bachelor,  together  with  the  fame  of  the  not  too  obdurate 
beauty  among  the  Don  Juans  of  the  valley,  brought  custom 
to  the  house.  La  Tonsard,  being  fond  of  good  eating,  be- 
came an  excellent  cook;  and  though  she  exercised  her  talents 
only  on  dishes  well  known  in  the  country,  such  as  jugged 
hare,  game,  sauce,  sea-pie,  and  omelettes,  she  was  supposed  to 
understand  to  admiration  the  art  of  cooking  a  meal  served  at 
a  table's  end,  and  so  prodigiously  over-seasoned  that  it  induces 
thirst.  In  these  ways  she  managed  Tonsard;  she  gave  him 
a  downward  push,  and  he  asked  nothing  better  than  to  aban- 
don himself  and  rolled  luxuriously  down  hill. 

The  rogue  became  a  confirmed  poacher;  he  had  nothing  to 
fear.  His  wife's  relations  with  Gaubertin,  bailiffs,  and  keep- 
ers, and  the  relaxed  notions  of  property  of  the  Revolution, 
assured  him  of  complete  immunity.  As  soon  as  the  children 
grew  big  enough,  he  made  what  he  could  out  of  them,  and  was 
no  more  scrupulous  as  to  their  conduct  than  he  had  been 
with  his  wife's.  He  had  two  girls  and  two  boys.  Tonsard 
lived,  like  his  wife,  from  hand  to  mouth,  and  there  would 
soon  have  been  an  end  of  this  merrv  life  of  his  if  he  had  not 


THE  PEASANTRY  45 

/aid  down  the  almost  martial  law,  that  every  one  in  his  house 
must  contribute  to  his  comfort,  in  which  for  that  matter  the 
rest  of  them  shared.  By  the  time  that  the  family  was  reared 
at  the  expense  of  those  from  whom  the  wife  knew  how  to  ex- 
tort presents,  this  is  a  statement  of  the  finances  of  the  Grand- 
l-Vert. 

Tonsard's  old  mother  and  two  girls,  Catherine  and  Marie, 
were  always  picking  up  firewood.  Twice  a  day  they  would 
come  home  bending  under  the  weight  of  a  faggot  that  reached 
to  the  ankle  and  projected  a  couple  of  feet  above  their  heads. 
The  outside  of  the  faggot  was  made  of  dead  sticks ;  the  green 
wood  often  cut  from  ypung  saplings  was  hidden  away  inside 
it.  In  the  fullest  sense  of  the  words,  Tonsard  took  all  his 
winter  fuel  from  the  Forest  of  the  Aigues. 

The  father  and  both  boys  were  habitual  poachers.  From 
September  to  March  all  the  game  that  they  did  not  eat  at 
home  they  sold.  Hares  and  rabbits,  partridges,  thrushes,  and 
roebucks — they  took  them  all  to  Soulanges,  the  little  town 
where  Tonsard's  girls  took  milk  from  door  to  door  every  morn- 
ing and  carried  back  the  news,  taken  in  exchange  for  the  gossip 
of  the  Aigues,  Cerneux,  and  Conches.  When  their  season 
was  over,  the  three  Tonsards  set  snares,  and  if  the  snares 
were  too  successful,  La  Tonsard  made  pies  and  sold  them 
in  Ville-aux-Fayes.  In  harvest-time  the  whole  family — the 
old  mother,  the  two  lads  (until  they  were  seventeen  years 
old),  the  two  girls,  old  Fourchon  and  Mouche,  seven  in  all 
of  the  Tonsard  clan — mustered  and  went  gleaning.  They 
would  pick  up  nearly  sixteen  bushels  a  day  among  them, 
rye,  barley,  wheat — anything  that  was  grist  for  the  mill. 

At  first  the  youngest  girl  took  the  two  cows  to  graze  by 
the  side  of  the  road;  though  the  animals,  for  the  most  part, 
broke  through  the  hedges  into  the  fields  of  the  Aigues.  But 
as  the  rural  policeman  was  bound  to  take  cognizance  of  any- 
thing of  the  nature  of  flagrant  trespass,  the  slightest  mistake 
on  the  children's  part  was  always  punished  by  a  whipping 
or  by  the  loss  of  some  dainty,  till  they  had  become  singularly 
expert  at  hearing  sounds  of  an  approaching  enemy.  The 


4<S  THE  PEASANTRY 

keepers  at  the  Aigues  and  the  rural  policeman  scarcely  ever 
caught  them  in  the  act.  Moreover,  the  relations  between  the 
aforesaid  functionaries  and  the  Tonsards,  husband  and  wife, 
dimmed  their  eyes  to  these  things.  The  cows  soon  grew  obe- 
dient to  a  pull  at  the  long  cord,  or  a  low  peculiar  call,  when 
they  found  that  as  soon  as  the  danger  was  past  they  might 
leave  the  roadside  to  finish  their  meal  in  the  neighboring 
field. 

Tonsard's  old  mother,  growing  more  and  more  feeble,  suc- 
ceeded to  Mouche  when  old  Fourchon  took  him  away  under 
pretence  of  educating  the  boy  himself.  Marie  and  Catherine 
made  hay  in  the  woods.  They  kne\w>  the  patches  where  the 
grass  grows  sweet  and  delicate,  and  cut  and  turned  it,  and 
made  and  stacked  the  hay.  They  found  two-thirds  of  the 
winter  fodder  in  the  woods,  and  on  the  sunniest  winter 
days  took  the  cows  to  pasture  on  spots  well  known  to  them 
where  the  grass  was  green  even  in  cold  weather;  for  in  cer- 
tain places  round  about  the  Aigues,  as  in  Piedmont  and  Lom- 
bardy  and  every  hill  country,  there  are  bits  of  land  where 
the  grass  grows  in  winter.  Such  a  meadow,  called  a  marcita 
in  Italy,  is  a  very  valuable  property  there;  but  in  France, 
to  do  well,  there  must  be  neither  too  much  frost  nor  too  much 
snow.  The  phenomenon  is  doubtless  due  partly  to  a  par- 
ticular aspect,  partly  to  the  infiltration  of  the  water,  which 
keeps  the  land  at  a  higher  temperature. 

The  calves  brought  in  about  eighty  francs;  and  the  milk, 
after  making  deductions  for  the  calves,  was  worth  about  a 
hundred  and  sixty  francs  in  money,  besides  the  supply  for 
the  house  and  the  dairy.  Tonsard  made  some  hundred  and 
fifty  crowns  by  doing  a  day's  work  for  one  and  another. 

The  tavern,  all  expenses  paid,  brought  in  about  three  hun- 
dred francs,  not  more,  for  merry-makings  are  essentially 
short-lived,  and  confined  to  certain  seasons.  La  Tonsard  and 
her  husband,  moreover,  usually  received  notice  of  a  "bean- 
feast" beforehand,  and  laid  in  the  small  quantity  of  meat 
required  and  the  necessary  provisions  from  the  town.  In 
ordinary  years  the  wine  from  the  Tonsards'  vineyard  fetched 


THE  PEASANTRY  4T 

twenty  francs  the  cask  (the  cask  not  included) ;  a  tavern- 
keeper  at  Soulanges,  with  whom  Tonsard  had  dealings,  was 
the  purchaser.  In  abundant  years  the  vineyard  would  yield 
twelve  hogsheads,  but  the  average  produce  was  eight,  and 
half  of  these  Tonsard  kept  for  his  own  trade.  In  vine- 
growing  districts  the  grape  gleanings  are  the  perquisite 
of  the  vintagers,  and  the  grape  gleaning  was  worth  three 
casks  of  wine  annually  to  the  Tonsard  family.  Sheltered  by 
local  customs,  they  showed  little  conscience  in  their  proceed- 
ings, finding  their  way  into  vineyards  before  the  vintagers 
had  done  their  work,  just  as  they  hurried  into  the  cornfields 
where  the  sheaves  stood  waiting  to  be  carted  away.  So,  of 
the  seven  or  eight  hogsheads  sold,  one-half  was  cribbed,  and 
fetched  a  better  price.  There  was  a  certain  amount  of  dead 
loss  to  be  deducted  in  the  budget,  for  Tonsard  and  his  wife 
always  ate  of  the  best,  and  drank  better  liquor  than  they  sold 
— supplied  to  them  by  their  Soulanges  correspondent  in  ex- 
change for  their  own  wines,  but  altogether,  the  money  made 
by  the  united  efforts  of  the  family  amounted  to  nine  hundred 
francs  or  thereabouts,  for  they  fattened  a  couple  of  pigs 
every  year — one  for  themselves,  and  one  for  sale. 

As  time  went  on  the  tavern  became  the  favorite  haunt  of 
laborers  and  of  all  the  scamps  in  the  countryside;  this  was 
due  partly  to  the  talents  of  the  Tonsard  family,  partly  to 
the  good-fellowship  existing  between  them  and  the  lowest 
class  in  the  valley.  Then  both  the  girls  were  remarkably 
handsome,  and  walked  in  the  ways  of  their  mother;  and 
finally,  the  Grand-I-Vert  was  such  an  old-established  tavern 
(dating,  as  it  did,  from  1795),  that  it  became  an  institution. 
From  Conches  to  Ville-aux-Fayes  the  laborers  came  to  con- 
clude their  bargains  there,  and  to  hear  the  news  gathered 
by  the  Tonsard  girls  and  Mouche  and  Fourchon,  retailed 
by  Vermichel  or  Brunet,  the  most  renowned  clerk  of  Sou- 
langes, who  came  thither  to  find  his  practitioners. 

The  prices  of  hay  and  wine,  day-work  and  piece-work,  were 
fixed  there ;  questions  were  referred  to  Tonsard's  decision ; 
and  he,  a  sovereign  judge  in  such  matters,  gave  advice  and 


48  THE  PEASANTRY 

drank  with  the  rest.  Soulanges,  so  the  saying  ran,  was  simply 
a  fashionable  place  where  people  amused  themselves;  Blangy 
was  the  place  for  business,  albeit  eclipsed  by  the  great  metrop- 
olis of  Ville-aux-Fayes,  which  in  twenty-five  years  had  come 
to  be  the  capital  of  the  magnificent  valley.  The  grain  and 
cattle  market  was  held  in  the  square  at  Blangy;  the  ruling 
prices  there  served  as  a  guide  for  the  whole  district. 

La  Tonsard,  being  a  keeper-at-home,  was  still  plump  and 
fair  and  young  looking,  when  women  who  work  in  the  fields 
fade  as  quickly  as  the  field  flowers,  and  are  old  crones  at 
thirty.  Moreover,  La  Tonsard  liked  to  look  her  best.  She 
was  only  neat  and  tidy,  but  in  a  village  tidiness  and  neatness 
means  luxury.  The  girls  were  dressed  better  than  befitted 
their  poverty,  and  followed  their  mother's  example.  Their 
bodices  were  almost  elegant,  and  the  linen  beneath  was  finer 
than  any  that  the  richest  peasant's  wife  wears.  On  high  days 
and  holidays  they  appeared  in  fine  frocks,  paid  for  heaven 
only  knows  how.  The  servants  at  the  Aigues  let  them  have 
their  cast-off  clothing  at  a  price  within  their  reach;  and 
gowns  which  had  swept  the  pavements  in  Paris,  altered  to 
suit  Marie  and  Catherine,  were  flaunted  at  the  sign  of  the 
Grand-I-Vert.  Neither  of  the  girls,  the  gypsies  of  the  valley, 
received  a  farthing  from  their  parents,  who  merely  boarded 
and  lodged  them,  letting  them  lie  in  the  loft  at  night  on  filthy 
mattresses,  where  the  grandmother  and  two  brothers  slept 
as  well,  all  huddled  together  in  the  hay  like  brutes.  Neither 
father  nor  mother  thought  anything  of  this  promiscuity.  The 
age  of  iron  and  the  age  of  gold  have  more  resemblances  than 
we  think.  Nothing  arouses  vigilance  in  the  one,  everything 
arouses  it  in  the  other,  and  for  Society  the  result  is  apparently 
the  same.  The  old  woman's  presence,  which  seemed  to  be 
less  a  safeguard  than  a  necessity,  only  made  matters  worse. 

The  Abbe  Brossette,  after  a  close  study  of  the  state  of 
things  among  his  parishioners,  made  this  profound  remark 
to  the  Bishop : 

"When  you  see  how  greatly  they  rely  on  their  poverty,  my 
lord,  you  can  guess  that  these  peasantry  are  in  terror  of 
losing  their  great  excuse  for  their  dissolute  lives." 


THE  PEASANTRY  4» 

Everybody  was  aware  how  little  the  Tonsard  family  knew 
of  scruples  or  principles,  but  nobody  found  any  fault  with 
their  way  of  life. 

At  the  outset  of  this  Scene  it  must  be  explained,  once  for 
all,  that  the  peasant's  code  is  not  the  bourgeois  code,  and 
that  in  family  life  the  peasants  have  no  sort  of  delicacy. 
If  the  daughter  is  seduced,  they  do  not  take  a  moral  tone 
unless  the  seducer  is  rich  and  can  be  frightened.  Their  chil- 
dren, until  the  State  tears  them  away  from  their  parents, 
are  so  much  capital,  or  are  made  to  conduce  to  their  parents' 
comfort.  Selfishness,  more  especially  since  1789,  is  the  one 
force  that  sets  them  thinking;  they  never  ask  whether  such 
a  thing  is  illegal  or  immoral,  but  what  good  it  will  do  them. 

Morality,  which  must  not  be  confused  with  religion,  begins 
with  a  competence,  just  as  in  still  higher  spheres  delicacy 
flourishes  in  human  nature  as  soon  as  fortune  has  gilded  the 
surrounding  furniture.  An  entirely  honest  and  well-con- 
ducted peasant  is  an  exception  to  his  class.  The  curious  will 
ask  how  this  is,  and  here  is  the  principal  cause,  one  of  many 
which  might  be  advanced — The  peasant's  functions  in  the 
social  scale  bring  him  into  close  contact  with  nature;  he  lives 
a  purely  material  life,  very  much  like  the  life  of  a  savage. 
The  toil  which  exhausts  the  body  leaves  the  mind  stagnant, 
and  this  is  especially  the  case  with  uneducated  people.  And, 
finally,  their  poverty  is  their  raison  d'tftat,  and  their  neces- 
sity is  to  them  a  necessity,  as  the  Abbe  Brossette  said. 

Tonsard  was  ready  to  listen  to  the  complaint  of  every  one, 
and  frauds  useful  to  the  needy  were  invented  under  his  direc- 
tion. The  wife,  a  good-natured  woman  to  all  appearance, 
helped  evil-doers  with  a  rancorous  tongue,  and  never  with- 
held her  countenance  or  refused  a  helping  hand  when  any- 
thing against  "the  masters"  was  afoot.  The  tavern  was  * 
perfect  nest  of  vipers,  where  the  hatred  which  the  proletariat 
and  the  peasantry  bear  to  the  rich  and  their  employers  was 
nursed  and  kept  alive,  venomous  and  active. 

The  Tonsards'  prosperity  was,  in  those  times,  the  worst  of 
examples.  Every  one  asked  himself  why  he  should  not  help 


50  THE  PEASANTRY 

himself  to  wood  as  they  did  in  the  Forest  of  the  Aigues,  and 
find  fuel  for  the  oven  and  faggots  for  cold  weather.  Why 
should  not  every  one  else  feed  a  cow  on  rich  people's  pastures, 
and  have  game  enough  to  eat  and  to  sell?  Why  should  not 
they  reap  without  sowing  at  harvest  and  vintage?  Then  the 
underhand  theft,  which  robbed  the  woods  and  took  tithes  of 
the  cornland,  meadows,  and  vineyards,  promptly  came  to  be 
regarded  as  a  vested  interest  in  the  communes  of  Blangy, 
Conches,  and  Cerneux,  which  encircled  the  Aigues.  This 
canker,  for  reasons  which  will  be  explained  in  the  proper 
place,  was  far  worse  on  the  Aigues  estate  than  on  the  lands 
of  Eonquerolles  and  Soulanges.  Do  not  imagine  that  Ton- 
sard,  or  his  old  mother,  or  wife  or  children,  ever  said  in  so  many 
words,  "We  will  steal  our  living,  and  we  will  do  our  thieving 
cleverly.'-'  The  habits  had  formed  slowly.  The  family  began 
by  mixing  a  few  green  boughs  with  the  sticks;  then,  grown 
bold  with  habit,  and  purposely  allowed  to  go  unpunished 
(part  of  a  scheme  to  be  developed  in  the  course  of  the  story), 
in  twenty  years'  time  they  had  come  to  the  point  of  "taking 
their  wood,"  and  making  a  living  almost  entirely  by  pilfering. 
The  right  of  pasture  for  their  cows,  the  abuse  of  the  privileges 
of  gleaning  and  grape-gleaning,  had  been  established  little 
by  little  in  this  way;  and  when  once  the  Tonsards  and  the 
rest  of  the  lazy  peasants  in  the  valley  had  felt  the  benefit  of 
the  four  rights  acquired  by  the  poor  in  the  country,  rights 
pushed  almost  to  spoliation,  it  may  be  imagined  that  they 
were  not  likely  to  relinquish  them  unless  compelled  by  some 
force  stronger  than  their  audacity. 

At  the  time  when  this  story  begins,  Tonsard  was  about 
fifty  years  old.  He  was  a  tall,  strong  man,  somewhat  inclined 
to  stoutness,  with  black  woolly  hair,  and  face  of  a  startling 
•  hue,  mottled  with  purplish  streaks  like  a  brick,  yellow  whites 
to  his  eyes,  flapping  ears  with  huge  rims,  a  low  flattened  fore- 
head, and  hanging  lip.  A  deceptive  flabbiness  of  flesh  cov- 
ered the  muscles  beneath,  and  the  man's  true  character  was 
hidden  under  a  certain  stupidity  enlightened  by  flashes  of 
experience,  which  seemed  the  more  like  wit  because,  in  the 


THE  PEASANTRY  51 

society  of  his  father-in-law,  he  had  learned  a  dialect  called 
"chaff"  in  the  dictionary  of  Messieurs  Fourchon  and  Ver- 
michel.  Tonsard's  nose  was  flattened  at  the  end  as  if  the 
finger  of  God  had  set  a  mark  upon  him;  he  spoke  in  conse- 
quence from  the  roof  of  the  mouth,  like  those  whom  disease 
has  disfigured  by  thickening  of  the  nasal  passages  through 
which  the  breath  passes  with  difficulty.  His  front  teeth  over- 
lapped— a  defect  ominously  significant,  according  to  Lavater, 
and  the  more  conspicuous  because  they  were  white  as  a  dog's 
teeth.  There  was  that  in  the  man,  beneath  the  veneer  of  an 
idle  fellow's  good  humor  and  the  easy-going  ways  of  a  tip- 
pling boor,  which  should  have  alarmed  the  least  perspicacious. 

Tonsard's  portrait,  the  picture  of  his  cabin,  and  the  sketch 
of  his  father-in-law,  seemed  to  occupy  a  prominent  position, 
but  you  may  be  sure  that  this  place  is  due  to  the  man,  the 
tavern,  and  the  family;  for  the  life  which  has  been  so 
minutely  described  is  a  typical  life,  one  of  a  hundred  led  by 
peasants  in  the  valley ;  and  although  Tonsard  was  only  a  tool 
in  the  hands  of  a  deeply  rooted  and  energetic  hate,  he  per- 
sonally exercised  an  immense  influence  on  the  fortunes  of  the 
battle  about  to  begin ;  he  was  the  cave  to  which  all  that  were 
discontented  among  the  lowest  class  betook  themselves;  his 
tavern  (as  will  shortly  be  seen)  was  over  and  over  again  the 
trysting-place  of  the  party,  even  as  he  himself  became  the  head 
of  the  movement,  by  reason  of  the  terror  which  he  inspired, 
less  by  what  he  actually  did  than  by  what  people  expected 
him  to  do.  The  poacher's  threats  were  quite  as  much  dreaded 
as  his  action ;  he  was  never  obliged  to  carry  out  a  single  one  of 
them. 

Every  rebellion,  open  or  covert,  has  its  standard.  The  flag 
of  marauders,  idlers,  and  sots,  therefore,  was  the  redoubtable 
bush  at  the  top  of  the  pole  by  the  gate  of  the  Grand-I-Vert. 
People  found  it  amusing  in  the  tavern,  and  amusement  is  as 
much  sought  after  and  as  hard  to  find  in  the  country  as  in 
the  town.  There  was  no  other  inn,  moreover,  along  twelve 
miles  of  road,  a  journey  which  loaded  vehicles  easily  made 
in  three  hours,  so  all  who  came  and  went  between  Conches 


52  THE  PEASANTRY 

and  Ville-aux-Fayes  stopped  at  the  tavern  if  only  for  a  rest. 
Then  the  miller,  the  deputy-mayor  of  the  arrondissement, 
came  in  now  and  then,  and  his  lads  came  too;  the  General's 
servants  did  not  despise  the  little  wineshop,  for  Tonsard's 
two  girls  were  an  attraction,  and  so  it  fell  out  that  through 
this  subterranean  connection  with  the  chateau,  the  Tonsards 
could  learn  all  that  they  desired.  It  is  impossible,  by  dint 
of  benefits  conferred  or  expected,  to  break  the  permanent 
alliance  between  servants  and  the  people.  The  lackey  comes 
from  the  people,  and  to  the  people  he  belongs.  This  ill- 
omened  good-fellowship  explains  Charles'  discreet  choice  of 
language  at  the  foot  of  the  flight  of  steps. 


IV 

ANOTHER  IDYLL 

"On !  Lord  sakes,  dad !"  cried  Tonsard,  at  the  sight  of  his 
father-in-law,  who  he  suspected  had  come  for  a  breakfast. 
"You  are  dry  in  the  throat  too  early  of  a  morning !  We  have 
nothing  for  you ! — And  how  about  that  rope,  the  rope  you 
were  to  make  for  us?  It  is  a  marvel  how  you  work  at  it 
of  an  evening,  and  find  so  little  done  next  morning.  You 
ought  to  have  twisted  enough  to  twist  your  own  neck  with 
ages  ago,  for  you  are  growing  altogether  too  dear " 

(The  wit  of  the  peasant  and  laborer  is  of  the  exceedingly 
Attic  kind,  which  consists  in  saying  the  thing  that  you  really 
think  with  a  certain  grotesque  exaggeration ;  nor  is  the  wit  of 
drawing-rooms  essentially  different ;  intellectual  subtleties  re- 
place the  picturesqueness  of  coarse,  forcible  language,  that  is 
all  the  difference.) 

"  'Tisn't  a  father-in-law,"  the  old  man  interrupted ;  "treat 
me  as  a  customer.  I  want  a  bottle  of  the  best." 

So  saying.  Fourchon  sat  down,  showing  a  five-franc  piece 
that  shone  like  a  sun  through  his  fingers  as  he  rapped  on  the 


THE  PEASANTRY  53 

sorry  table — a  piece  of  furniture  curious  to  behold  by  reason 
of  its  charred  spots,  wine  stains,  and  notches  covered  with  a 
coating  of  grease.  At  the  sound  of  silver,  Marie  Tonsard, 
like  a. privateering  corvette  on  a  cruise,  gave  her  grandfather 
a  quick  glance,  a  sly  look  that  gleamed  like  a  yellow  spark 
in  her  blue  eyes;  and  the  jingling  of  the  metal  brought  La 
Tonsard  out  of  her  room. 

"You  are  always  hard  on  poor  father,"  said  she,  looking 
at  Tonsard,  "and  yet  he  earns  a  good  deal  of  money  in  a  year. 
God  grant  it  is  honestly  come  by ! — Let  us  have  a  look  at 
this,"  she  added,  and  she  pounced  down  on  the  coin,  and 
snatched  it  out  of  old  Fourchon's  hands. 

"Go,  Marie,"  Tonsard  said  with  gravity;  "there  is  still 
some  wine  in  bottle  left  under  the  shelf." 

(In  country  places  there  is  but  one  quality  of  wine,  but  it 
is  sold  under  two  names — wine  from  the  cask,  and  wine  in 
bottle.) 

"Where  did  that  come  from?"  La  Tonsard  demanded  of 
her  father,  as  she  slipped  the  coin  into  her  pocket. 

"Philippine,  you  will  come  to  a  bad  end,"  retorted  her 
parent,  shaking  his  head,  without  an  attempt  to  recover  his 
money.  By  this  time,  doubtless,  Fourchon  recognized  the 
futility  of  a  struggle  between  his  terrible  son-in-law,  his 
daughter,  and  himself. 

"There's  one  more  bottle  of  wine  for  which  you  get  five 
francs  out  of  me,"  he  added  sarcastically,  "but  that  shall  be 
the  last.  I  shall  take  my  custom  to  the  Cafe  de  la  Paix." 

"You  be  quiet,  father,"  returned  the  fat,  fair  mistress  of 
the  house,  who  was  rather  like  a  Koman  matron.  "You  want 
a  shirt,  a  tidy  pair  of  trousers,  and  another  hat,  and  I  should 
like  to  see  you  in  a  new  waistcoat  at  last." 

"I  have  told  you  before  that  that  would  be  the  ruin  of  me !" 
the  old  man  shouted.  "If  people  think  I  am  rich,  they  won't 
give  me  anything." 

The  entrance  of  the  fair-haired  Marie  with  the  bottle  cut 
short  old  Fourchon's  eloquence,  for  he  did  not  lack  that  char- 
acteristic of  an  outspokenness  which  permits  itself  to  say 


54  THE  PEASANTRY 

everything  and  shrinks  from  giving  no  thought  expression, 
however  atrocious  it  may  be. 

"Then  you  have  no  mind  to  tell  us  where  you  bag  so  much 
money  ?"  asked  Tonsard.  "Some  of  us  might  go  there,  I  sup- 
pose ? " 

The  brutal  master  of  the  house,  while  finishing  a  snare,  was 
eying  his  father-in-law.  He  scanned  the  old  man's  trousers, 
and  soon  spied  the  round  edge  of  the  second  five-franc  piece 
in  his  pocket. 

"Here's  to  you ! — I  am  turning  capitalist,"  said  old  Four- 
chon. 

"So  you  could,  if  you  liked,"  said  Tonsard ;  "you  are  clever 
enough,  you  are,  only  the  devil  made  a  hole  in  the  bottom  of 
your  head,  and  everything  runs  down  through  it." 

"Eh !  I  have  been  playing  off  the  otter  dodge  on  that  young 
fellow  from  Paris  up  at  the  Aigues,  that  is  all !" 

"If  many  people  were  to  come  to  see  the  source  of  the 
Avonne,  you  would  be  rich,  Daddy  Fourchon,"  said  Marie. 

"Yes,"  and  he  drank  off  the  last  glass  of  his  bottle.  "But 
I  have  played  the  otter  dodge  so  often,  that  the  otters  are 
growing  angry,  and  one  ran  between  my  legs,  which  will 
bring  me  twenty  francs  or  more." 

"You  made  an  otter  out  of  tow,  daddy,  I'll  be  bound," 
said  La  Tonsard,  with  a  knowing  look  at  the  old  man. 

"If  you  give  me  a  pair  of  trousers,  a  waistcoat,  and  a  pair 
of  list  braces,  so  as  I  shan't  be  too  much  of  a  discredit  to 
Vermichel  on  our  platform  at  The  Tivoli  (for  old  Socquard 
is  always  grumbling  at  me),  I  will  let  you  keep  the  money, 
daughter;  your  idea  is  quite  worth  it.  I  may  take  in  that 
young  fellow  again;  after  this  one  try,  he  may  very  likely 
take  to  otter-hunting." 

"Go  and  find  us  another  bottle,"  said  Tonsard,  addressing 
his  daughter. — "If  your  father  had  an  otter,  he  would  let  us 
see  it,"  he  added,  speaking  to  his  wife.  He  hoped  to  rouse 
Fourchon's  vanity. 

"I  am  too  much  afraid  of  seeing  her  in  your  frying-pan," 
the  old  man  said,  and  one  little  green  eye  winked  at  La  Ton- 


THE  PEASANTRY  55 

sard.  "Philippine  has  just  sneaked  my  five-franc  piece,  and 
how  much  haven't  you  bullied  out  of  me  for  clothes  and  board, 
forsooth ! — And  you  tell  me  that  I  am  dry  too  early  in  the 
day,  and  I  never  have  clothes  to  my  back " 

"Because  you  sold  your  last  suit  to  buy  spiced  wine  at  the 
Cafe  de  la  Paix !"  said  his  daughter ;  "and,  proof  of  that, 
Vermichel  tried  to  stop  you — 

"Vermichel !  After  I  stood  treat !  Vermichel  is  incapable 
of  treachery  to  friendship.  It  will  be  that  hundredweight  of 
stale  bacon  on  two  legs  that  he  is  not  ashamed  to  call  his 
wife !" 

"He  or  she,"  said  Tonsard,  "or  Bonnebault " 

"If  it  was  Bonnebault,"  retorted  Fourchon,  "him  as  is  one 
of  the  pillars  of  the  Cafe— I'll— I'll—  That's  enough !" 

"But  where's  the  harm  if  you  did  sell  your  things,  old 
plate-licker  ?  You  sold  them  because  you  sold  them ;  you  are 
of  age,"  returned  Tonsard,  slapping  the  old  man's  knee. 
"Come,  give  your  custom  to  my  barrels,  redden  your  gullet; 
the  missus'  father  has  a  right  to  do  it,  and  better  do  that  than 
carry  your  white  silver  to  Socquard's." 

"To  think  that  you  have  played  tunes  for  them  to  dance 
to  at  the  Tivoli  these  fifteen  years,  and  cannot  find  out  how 
Socquard  mulls  his  wine,  you  that  are  so  cunning !"  said  his 
daughter,  addressing  her  parent.  "And  yet  you  know  quite 
well  that  with  that  secret  we  should  be  as  rich  as  Eigou." 

In  the  Morvan,  and  that  strip  of  Burgundy  which  lies  on 
the  Paris  side  of  the  Morvan,  the  spiced  wine  with 'which 
La  Tonsard  reproached  her  father  is  a  somewhat  expensive 
beverage,  which  plays  a  great  part  in  the  lives  of  the  peasants. 
Grocers  compound  it  with  more  or  less  success,  so  do  lemon- 
ade-makers where  there  are  cafes.  The  delectable  drink,  com- 
posed of  choice  wine,  sugar,  cinnamon,  .and  other  spices,  is 
much  to  be  preferred  to  the  multifarious  mixtures  and  dis- 
guised forms  of  brandy  known  as  ratafia,  cent-sept-ans,  eau- 
des-braves,  cordial,  vespetro,  esprit-de-soleil,  and  the  like. 
Spiced  wine  is  to  be  found  even  on  the  very  borders  of  Swit- 
zerland. In  wild  nooks  in  the  Jura,  where  an  occasional  de- 


56  THE  PEASANTRY 

termined  tourist  penetrates,  the  innkeepers  call  it  Wine  of 
Syracuse,  taking  the  word  of  commercial  travelers.  It  is 
not  bad  in  itself;  and  when  mountain-climbing  has  induced 
a  wolfish  hunger,  you  are  only  too  glad  to  pay  the  three  or 
four  francs  charged  for  a  bottle.  In  every  household  in 
Burgundy  or  the  Morvan  any  trifling  ailment  or  excitement 
is  an  excuse  for  drinking  spiced  wine.  Women  take  it  before 
and  after  a  confinement  with  toast  and  sugar.  Peasants  have 
been  known  to  squander  their  whole  substance  on  spiced  wine, 
and  not  unfrequently  the  too  attractive  liquor  necessitates 
marital  correction. 

"There  is  no  smoking  that,"  said  Fourchon.  "Socquard 
always  shuts  himself  up  to  make  his  spiced  wine.  He  did  not 
let  his  wife  that's  gone  into  the  secret,  and  he  has  everything 
from  Paris  to  make  the  stuff." 

"Don't  you  tease  your  father,"  cried  Tonsard.  "He  doesn't 
know — well  and  good,  he  doesn't  know.  One  can't  know 
everything." 

Fourchon  felt  uneasy  at  this  affability  of  speech  and  coun- 
tenance on  the  part  of  his  son-in-law. 

"Be  you  minded  to  rob  me  ?"  the  old  man  asked  naively. 

efl've  nothing  but  what  lawfully  belongs  to  me,"  said  Ton- 
Sard  ;  "and  when  I  take  anything  away  from  you,  I  am  only 
helping  myself  to  the  portion  you  promised  I  should  have." 

The  rough  words  reassured  Fourchon.  He  bowed  his  head, 
like  a  man  convicted  and  convinced. 

"There's  a  fine  springe,"  Tonsard  continued,  coming  up 
to  his  father-in-law,  and  putting  the  trap  on  the  old  man's 
knees.  "They  will  want  game  up  at  the  Aigues,  and  we  will 
supply  them  with  some  of  their  own,  certain  sure,  or  there 
is  no  Providence  for  us  poor  folk." 

"You  have  made  a  good  strong  job  of  it,"  said  the  old  man, 
surveying  the  deadly  engine. 

"Let  us  pick  up  a  few  pence  at  any  rate,  dad,"  said  La 
Tonsard;  "we  shall  have  our  slice  of  the  loaf  of  the 
Aigues " 

"Babblers !"  Tonsard  broke  in.     "If  I  am  hanged,  it  will 


THE  PEASANTRY  57 

not  be  for  a  gun-shot,  but  the  clack  of  your  daughter's 
tongue." 

"Then  do  you  think  that  the  Aigues  will  be  sold  in  lots, 
for  the  sake  of  your  ugly  phiz?  What,  old  Eigou  has  been 
sucking  the  marrow  out  of  your  bones  these  thirty  years,  and 
you  don't  know  that  the  bourgeois  are  worse  than  the  sei- 
gneurs ?  When  that  affair  comes  off,  those  nobodies,  the  Sou- 
drys,  Gaubertins,  and  Eigous  will  set  you  dancing  to  the  tune 
of  'J'ai  du  bon  tcibac,  tu  n'en  auras  pas'  the  national  an- 
them of  the  rich,  eh?  The  peasant  will  always  be  the 
peasant.  Don't  you  see  (but  you  know  nothing  about  poli- 
tics) that  Government  puts  on  the  wine-dues  simply  to  do  us 
out  of  our  chink  and  keep  us  poor?  The  bourgeois  or  the 
Government,  it  is  all  one.  What  would  become  of  them  if 
we  were  all  rich?  Would  they  work  in  the  fields?  Would 
they  do  the  harvesting? — They  must  have  poor  folk.  I  was 
rich  for  ten  years,  and  I  know  quite  well  what  I  used  to  think 
about  paupers !" 

"You  must  hunt  with  them,  all  the  same,"  said  Tonsard, 
"because  they  break  up  the  big  estates  into  lots,  and  we  can 
turn  on  Eigou  afterwards.  He  is  eating  up  Courtecuisse ; 
but  if  I  were  in  Courtecuisse's  place,  poor  fellow,  I  would 
have  paid  my  shot  in  lead  instead  of  silver,  long  ago " 

"Eight  you  are,"  said  Fourchon.  "It  is  as  old  Niseron  says, 
who  kept  on  being  a  Eepublican  after  everybody  else  left  off, 
'The  people  die  hard,  the  people  don't  die,  they  have  time 
on  their  side  !' '' 

The  old  man  dropped  into  a  kind  of  dream.  Tonsard  took 
advantage  of  this  to  take  back  his  springe ;  but  as  he  laid  his 
hand  upon  it,  he  made  a  slit  with  a  pair  of  scissors  in  the 
old  man's  trousers,  and  just  as  Fourchon  raised  his  glass  to 
drink,  the  five-franc  piece  slid  down  to  a  place  on  the  floor 
that  was  always  damp  with  the  dregs  of  glasses.  Tonsard 
set  his  foot  on  it.  It  was  neatly  done;  yet  the  old  man  might 
perhaps  have  found  it  out  if  Vermichel  had  not  turned  up 
at  that  very  moment. 

"Tonsard !"  called  that  functionary  from  the  foot  of  the 
steps.  <rWhere  is  your  dad,  do  you  know?" 


58  THE  PEASANTRY 

Vermichel  shouted,  the  coin  was  stolen,  and  the  glasa 
emptied  simultaneously. 

"Here,  captain !"  said  Fourchon,  holding  out  a  hand  to 
help  Vermichel  up  the  steps. 

You  cannot  imagine  a  type  more  thoroughly  Burgundian 
than  Vermichel.  His  countenance,  not  crimson  but  scarlet, 
like  certain  tropical  portions  of  the  globe  bore  several  con- 
spicuous extinct  volcanoes,  and  a  greenish  eruption,  which 
Fourchon  rather  poetically  called  "grog  blossoms."  The 
features  of  this  inflamed  face  had  been  swollen  out  of  all 
knowledge  through  habitual  drunkenness;  it  was  a  cyclopean 
visage,  with  an  eye  keen  and  wide  awake  on  one  side,  but 
blind  on  the  other,  where  the  sight  was  obscured  by  a  yellow- 
ish film.  With  a  shock  head  of  red  hair,  and  a  beard  of  the 
traditional  Judas  pattern,  Vermichel's  appearance  was  as  for- 
midable as  his  nature  was  harmless.  His  trumpet-like  nose 
was  a  sort  of  note  of  interrogation,  to  which  a  huge  slit  of  a 
mouth  seemed  to  reply  even  when  shut. 

Vermichel  was  a  little  man.  He  wore  iron-bound  shoes, 
trousers  of  bottle-green  velveteen,  an  ancient  waistcoat  so 
much  mended  that  it  looked  like  a  bit  of  patchwork  quilt,  a 
rough  blue  cloth  coat,  and  a  broad-brimmed  gray  hat.  This 
splendor  of  costume — demanded  of  him  by  his  functions  in 
the  town  of  Soulanges,  where  he  combined  the  offices  of  hall- 
porter  at  the  townhall,  town-crier,  jailer,  fiddler,  and  solic- 
itor— was  entirely  due  to  the  exertions  of  Mme.  Vermichel, 
a  terrible  foe  to  Eabelaisian  philosophy.  This  moustached 
virago,  a  good  yard  broad,  seventeen  stone  in  weight,  and  ac- 
tive in  proportion  to  her  size,  bore  rule  over  Vermichel;  she 
beat  him  when  he  was  drunk,  and  when  he  was  sober  he  al- 
lowed her  to  beat  him,  for  which  reason  old  Fourchon  cast 
contemptuous  eyes  on  Vermichel's  apparel — "The  garb  of  a 
slave  !"  he  used  to  call  it. 

"Talk  of  the  sun  and  you  see  his  rays,"  Fourchon  continued, 
repeating  an  old  joke  occasioned  by  Vermichel's  red  beaming 
countenance,  and  indeed  it  was  not  unlike  the  gilded  sun 
hung  out  for  a  sign  above  country  inns.  "Did  your  missus 


THE  PEASANTRY  59 

see  too  much  dust  on  your  jacket,  and  are  you  running  away 
from  your  four-fifths?  (for  you  can't  call  that  wife  of  yours 
your  better  half) .  What  brings  you  here  so  early,  eh,  beaten 
drum?" 

"Politics  as  usual,"  said  Vermichel;  evidently  he  was  used 
to  these  jokes. 

"Oh !  Business  is  flat  at  Blangy,  and  we  shall  have  bills 
protested  directly,"  said  old  Fourchon,  pouring  out  a  glass 
for  his  friend. 

"Our  ape  is  on  my  tracks,"  said  Vermichel,  raising  his 
glass. 

In  laborers'  slang,  the  ape  is  the  master.  This  was  an- 
other expression  in  Messrs.  Vermichel  and  Fourchon's  dic- 
tionary. 

"Why  is  Master  Brunet  coming  to  bother  us  up  here  ?"  de- 
manded La  Tonsard. 

"Eh,  goodness,  you  people  have  brought  him  in  more  than 
you  are  worth  yourselves  these  three  years. — Oh,  the  master 
up  at  the  Aigues  is  going  to  pay  you  out  properly.  He  is 
coming  on  well,  is  the  Upholsterer. — As  old  Brunet  says,  'If 
there  were  three  like  him  in  the  valley,  my  fortune  would  be 
made ' " 

"What  have  they  been  plotting  fresh  against  the  poor 
folk?"  asked  Marie. 

"My  word,"  answered  Vermichel,  "he  is  no  fool,  he  isn't ! 
You  will  have  to  knuckle  under  in  the  long  run. — There  is 
no  help  for  it !  They  have  been  in  force  for  the  last  two 
years,  with  their  four  gamekeepers  and  a  mounted  patrol  all 
running  about  like  ants,  and  a  forester  that  works  like  a 
nigger.  And  now  the  police  will  do  anything  they  like  for 
them. — They  will  grind  you  down " 

"Not  they !"  said  Tonsard ;  "we  are  too  small  already.  It 
is  not  the  trees  as  stands  out  longest,  it's  the  grass." 

"Don't  you  believe  it,"  old  Fourchon  retorted;  "you  have 
land  of  your  own ' 

"After  all,"  Vermichel  went  on,  "those  folk  are  very  fond 
of  you,  for  they  think  of  you  from  morning  to  night.  This 

VOL.    IO — 30 


60  THE  PEASANTRY 

is  the  sort  of  thing  they  say — 'Those  people  pasture  their 
cattle  on  our  meadows,  so  we  will  take  their  cattle  away  from 
them,  and  then  they  cannot  eat  the  grass  in  our  meadows  them- 
selves/ As  one  and  all  of  you  have  judgments  hanging  over 
you,  they  have  given  orders  to  our  ape  to  seize  your  cows.  We 
are  going  to  begin  with  Conches ;  this  morning  we  shall  seize 
Mother  Bonnebault's  cow,  Godain's  cow,  Mitant's  cow " 

As  soon  as  Marie  heard  the  name  of  Bonnebault,  she  looked 
knowingly  at  her  father  and  mother,  and  darted  out  of  the 
house  and  into  the  vineyard;  she  was  Bonnebault's  sweet- 
heart, and  the  old  woman  with  the  cow  was  Bonnebault's 
grandmother.  She  slipped  like  an  eel  through  a  hole  in  the 
hedge,  and  fled  away  to  Conches  with  the  speed  of  a  hare  with 
the  hounds  on  her  track. 

"They  will  do  this  much,"  said  Tonsard  placidly;  "they 
will  get  their  bones  broken,  and  that  will  be  a  pity,  for  their 
mothers  won't  find  them  new  ones." 

"That  may  very  well  happen,  all  the  same,"  assented  Four- 
chon. — "But  look  here,  Vermichel,  I  can't  come  with  you  for 
an  hour  yet ;  I  have  important  business  at  the  chateau." 

"More  important  than  three  fees  of  five  sous  each?  You 
had  better  not  quarrel  with  your  own  bread  and  butter." 

"My  business  lies  at  the  Aigues,  I  tell  you,  Vermichel,"  said 
old  Fourchon,  with  ludicrous  self-importance. 

"Besides,  suppose  that  father  had  better  be  out  of  the  way," 
said  La  Tonsard.  "Now,  maybe  you  would  mean  to  look  for 
the  cows  ?"  she  queried. 

"M.  Brunet  is  a  good  soul ;  if  he  finds  nothing  but  the  cow- 
dung,  he  will  ask  no  better,"  answered  Vermichel.  "A  man 
like  him,  that  has  to  go  about  the  roads  of  a  night,  ought  to 
mind  what  he  is  about." 

"If  he  does,  he  is  right,"  Tonsard  said  drily. 

"So  he  talks  like  this  to  M.  Michaud,"  Vermichel  went 
on.  "  'I  shall  go  as  soon  as  the  court  rises.'  If  he  really  meant 
to  find  the  cows,  he  would  have  gone  to-morrow  morning  at 
seven  o'clock.  But  there,  go  he  must,  M.  Brunet.  You  won't 


THE  PEASANTRY  61 

catch  Michaud  napping  twice;  he  is  an  old  dog,  and  up  to 
everything.  Ah,  there's  a  ruffian  for  you !" 

"A  bully  like  that  ought  to  have  stopped  in  the  army/'  said 
Tonsard;  "he  is  only  fit  to  let  loose  on  the  enemy.  I  wish 
he  would  come  here,  I  know,  and  ask  me  my  name;  he  may 
call  himself  a  veteran  of  the  Young  Guard  as  much  as  he 
pleases,  sure  am  I  that  after  we  measured  our  spurs,  I'd  pull 
more  feathers  out  of  the  old  cock  than  he  would  have  out  of 
me," 

"Oh,  by  the  by,"  said  La  Tonsard,  turning  to  Vermichel, 
"there  are  the  advertisements  of  the  Fete  at  Soulanges,  when 
will  they  be  out  ?  Here  we  are  at  the  8th  of  August." 

"I  took  them  yesterday  to  the  printer,  M.  Bournier  at  Ville- 
aux-Fayes/^  said  Vermichel. — "There  was  talk  at  Ma'am 
iSoudry's  of  fireworks  on  the  lake." 

"What  a  lot  of  people  we  shall  have !"  cried  Fourchon. 

"And  the  takingy  of  days  together  for  Socquard,"  said  Ton- 
sard  enviously. 

"Oh,  perhaps  it  will  rain,"  added  his  wife,  as  if  to  reassure 
herself. 

The  sound  of  horsevs  hoofs  came  from  the  direction  of  Sou- 
langes, and  five  minutes  later  the  clerk  of  the  court  tied  his 
horse  to  a  stake  set  for  that  purpose  by  the  wicket-gate,  near 
the  cowshed.  He  soon  showed  his  face  at  the  door. 

"Come,  come,  boys,  Let  us  lose  no  time,"  cried  he,  with  a 
pretence  of  hurry. 

"Ha !"  said  Vermichel,  "here's  a  deserter  for  you,  M.  Bru- 
net.  Daddy  Fourchon  wants  to  drop  out  of  this  business." 

"He  has  had  a  drop  too  much/'  retorted  the  clerk,  "but 
the  law  does  not  require  him  to  be  sober." 

"Asking  your  pardon,  M.  Brunet,"  said  Fourchon,  "I  am 
expected  at  the  Aigues  on  business;  there  is  a  bargain  for 
an  otter  on  hand." 

Brunet  was  a  little  dried-up  man,  dressed  in  black  cloth 
from  head  to  foot.  With  his  bilious  complexion,  sly  eyes, 
crisp  hair,  firm  mouth,  pinched  nose,  fidgety  manner,  and 
hoarse  voice,  his  whole  appearance  and  character  exactly 


62  THE  PEASANTRY 

suited  his  profession.  So  well  versed  was  he  in  law,  or,  rather, 
in  chicanery,  that  he  was  at  once  the  adviser  and  the  terror  of 
the  canton;  and,  moreover,  he  did  not  lack  a  certain  kind  of 
popularity  among  the  peasants,  of  whom,  for  the  most  part, 
he  took  payment  in  kind.  All  his  positive  and  negative  qual- 
ities, together  with  his  knowledge  of  their  ways,  had  brought 
him  a  practice  in  the  district,  to  the  prejudice  of  his  colleague, 
Maitre  Plissoud,  of  whom  more  will  be  said  later  on.  It  not 
unfrequently  happens  in  country  places  that  one  clerk  of  the 
peace  does  all  the  business,  and  the  other  has  none. 

"Then  is  there  any  hurry  ?"  asked  Tonsard  of  little  Brunet. 

"There  is  no  help  for  it!  You  are  plundering  that  man 
beyond  everything,  and  it's  in  self-defence,"  said  the  clerk. 
"This  whole  business  of  yours  will  end  badly;  the  Govern- 
ment will  take  it  up." 

"So  we  poor  wretches  are  to  die  like  dogs,  are  we?"  asked 
Tonsard,  bringing  out  a  glass  of  brandy  on  a  saucer  for  the 
clerk. 

"The  poor  may  die  like  dogs,  there  will  always  be  plenty 
left,"  said  Fourchon  sententiously. 

"And  then  you  do  more  damage  than  a  little  in  the  woods," 
pursued  the  man  of  law. 

"Don't  you  believe  it,  M.  Brunet;  there  is  a  good  deal  of 
noise  made  about  a  few  miserable  faggots,  that  there  is !"  said 
La  Tonsard. 

"They  did  not  clear  away  enough  rich  people  at  the  time 
of  the  Revolution,  that  is  all,"  said  Tonsard. 

As  he  spoke  a  sound  was  heard,  alarming  in  that  it  was 
inexplicable.  A  sound  of  footsteps  at  a  furious  pace,  the  rat- 
tle of  arms  rising  above  a  crackling  sound  of  brushwood 
dragged  along  the  ground,  and  a  patter  of  feet  that  fled 
faster  than  the  pursuer.  Two  voices  as  different  as  the  foot- 
steps bawled  interjections.  The  group  in  the  tavern  knew 
that  it  was  a  man  in  hot  chase  and  a  woman  in  flight,  but 
why  and  wherefore  ?  The  suspense  did  not  last  long. 

"That's  mother,"  remarked  Tonsard,  starting  up ;  "I  know 
her  squall." 


THE  PEASANTRY  63 

And  in  another  moment,  after  springing  up  the  broken 
steps  with  a  final  effort  such  as  smugglers'  legs  alone  can 
make,  Granny  Tonsard  fell  backwards,  sprawling  in  their 
midst.  The  huge  mass  of  wood  and  sticks  in  her  faggot  made 
a  terrific  amount  of  noise  as  it  bent  and  broke  against  the 
lintel  and  the  ceiling.  Every  one  whisked  out  of  her  way. 
Tables,  bottles,  and  chairs  were  overturned  in  all  directions 
as  the  branches  fell  about ;  the  whole  cabin  might  have  fallen 
in  with  a  less  mighty  crash. 

"He  has  killed  me,  the  scamp!  the  shock  has  killed 
me " 

Then  the  old  woman's  shriek,  flight,  and  sudden  entrance 
were  all  explained  by  an  apparition  on  the  threshold;  there 
stood  a  man  dressed  in  green  cloth  from  head  to  foot,  his  hat 
bound  with  a  silver  cord,  a  sabre  at  his  side,  and  the  crest  of 
Montcornet  and  Troisville  stamped  on  his  shoulder  belt;  he 
wore  the  regulation  red  soldier's  waistcoat  and  leather  gaiters 
reaching  just  above  the  knee. 

It  was  a  forester.  There  was  a  moment's  hesitation;  then 
the  man  exclaimed,  as  he  saw  Brunet  and  Vermichel,  "I  have 
witnesses !" 

"Of  what  ?"  asked  Tonsard. 

"That  woman  has  an  oak  ten  years  old,  chopped  into  billets, 
in  her  faggot.  Downright  stealing !" 

As  soon  as  the  word  "witness"  was  pronounced,  Vermichel 
considered  that  the  moment  was  eminently  suitable  for  going 
into  the  croft  to  take  the  air. 

"Witnesses  of  what?  Of  what?"  cried  Tonsard,  planting 
himself  in  front  of  the  forester,  while  La  Tonsard  raised  her 
prostrate  mother-in-law.  "Have  the  goodness  to  show  me  a 
clean  pair  of  heels,  Vatel !  Pounce  on  people  and  draw  up 
your  reports  on  the  highway  where  you  are  on  your  own 
ground,  you  brigand,  but  get  out  of  this.  My  house  belongs 
to  me,  I  suppose.  A  man's  house  is  his  castle — 

"I  caught  your  mother  in  the  act,  and  she  will  come  along 
with  me." 

"Arrest  my  mother  in  my  house !    You  have  no  right  to  do 


64  THE  PEASANTRY 

it!  My  house  is  inviolable,  every  one  knows  that  much  at 
least.  Have  you  a  magistrate's  warrant  from  M.  Guerbet? 
Ah !  that  is  what  the  police  must  have  before  they  come  into 
the  house,  and  you  are  not  a  policeman,  though  you  may  have 
taken  your  oath  at  the  court  to  make  us  die  of  hunger,  you 
pitiful  forest  catch-poll." 

The  forester's  rage  rose  to  such  a  pitch  that  he  tried  to  seize 
on  the  faggot ;  but  the  old  hag,  a  hideous,  dirty  bit  of  parch- 
ment endowed  with  life,  such  as  you  will  not  see  save  in 
David's  picture  of  the  Sabines,  yelled,  "If  you  touch  that,  I'll 
go  for  your  eyes." 

"Look  here,  I  dare  you  to  undo  the  faggot  before  M.  Bru- 
net,"  said  the  forester. 

Although  the  clerk  assumed  the  air  of  indifference  which 
officials  learn  to  wear  in  experience  of  affairs,  he  looked  at  the 
host  and  his  wife,  and  blinked  in  a  way  which  meant,  "This 
is  a  bad  business." 

As  for  old  Fourchon,  he  pointed  to  the  heap  of  ashes  on  the 
hearth,  and  looked  at  his  daughter.  In  a  moment  La  Tonsard 
grasped  the  situation,  her  mother-in-law's  peril,  and  her 
father's  mute  counsel;  she  snatched  up  a  handful  of  ashes, 
and  dashed  it  full  in  the  forester's  eyes.  Vatel  began  to  yell. 
Tonsard,  illuminated  by  all  the  light  of  which  the  other  was 
bereft,  pushed  him  roughly  out  on  to  the  steps,  where  a  blind 
man  might  easily  miss  his  footing.  Vatel  rolled  down  into 
the  road,  and  dropped  his  gun.  In  the  twinkling  of  an  eye 
the  faggot  was  unbound,  the  logs  extracted,  and  hidden  with 
nimbleness  which  no  words  can  describe.  Brunet,  having  no 
mind  to  be  a  witness  to  an  exploit  which  he  had  foreseen,  hur- 
ried out  to  the  forester's  assistance,  picked  him  up,  set  him  on 
the  bank,  and  went  to  soak  his  handkerchief  in  water,  so  as 
to  bathe  the  sufferer's  eyes ;  for,  in  spite  of  the  pain,  the  man 
was  trying  to  drag  himself  towards  the  brook. 

"Vatel,  you  are  in  the  wrong,"  said  the  clerk.  "You  have 
no  right  to  enter  a  house,  you  know " 

On  the  threshold  stood  the  old  woman,  a  dwarfish,  almost 
hunchbacked  figure;  lightnings  flashed  from  her  eyes,  while 
insults  poured  from  her  tongue;  the  toothless  crone  foamed 


THE  PEASANTRY  05 

at  the  mouth,  standing  with  her  hands  on  her  hips,  yelling 
so  loud  that  they  might  have  heard  her  at  Blangy. 

"Ah!  scamp,  serves  you  right,  it  does!  Hell  confound 
you!  Suspect  me  of  cutting  trees,  me  the  honestest  wo- 
man in  the  place,  and  hunt  me  down  like  vermin !  I  should 
like  to  see  you  lose  your  cursed  eyes !  and  then  there  would  be 
peace  again  in  the  countryside.  You  bring  bad  luck,  every 
one  of  you,  you  and  your  mates,  making  up  shameful  stories 
to  stir  up  strife  between  your  master  and  us — 

The  forester  submitted  while  the  justice's  clerk  cleared  the 
ashes  from  his  eyes,  and  bathed  them,  demonstrating  all  the 
while  that  his  patient  had  put  himself  in  the  wrong  as  to  the 
law. 

"The  harridan  !  She  had  tired  us  out,"  Vital  said  at  last ; 
"she  has  been  in  the  wood  ever  since  it  was  light " 

Meanwhile  the  stolen  goods  were  concealed,  the  whole 
family  lent  a  hand,  and  in  a  trice  everything  in  the  tavern 
was  in  its  place  again.  This  done,  Tonsard  came  to  the  door 
and  took  a  high  and  mighty  tone. 

"Vatel,  sonny,  the  next  time  you  take  it  into  your  head  to 
force  your  way  into  my  house,  my  gun  will  have  something 
to  say  to  you.  You  have  had  the  ashes  this  time,  you  may 
catch  a  sight  of  the  fire  next.  You  don't  know  your  business. 
— You  are  feeling  warm  after  this ;  if  you  would  like  a  glass 
of  wine,  they'll  bring  one  for  you;  you  can  see  for  yourself 
if  there  is  a  scrap  of  live  wood  in  my  mother's  faggot,  it  is  all 
sticks." 

"Scum  of  the  earth !"  ejaculated  the  forester  for  Brunei's 
benefit,  more  hurt  in  his  mind  by  that  piece  of  irony  than 
by  the  ashes  in  his  eyes. 

Just  at  that  moment  Charles,  the  man  who  had  been  sent 
in  search  of  Blondet,  appeared  at  the  gate. 

"Why,  what  is  the  matter,  Vatel  ?"  cried  he. 

"Oh !"  answered  the  forester,  drying  his  eyes,  which  he  had 
been  dipping  wide  open  in  the  stream  for  a  final  cleansing, 
"I  have  some  debtors  up  there;  I  will  make  them  curse  the 
day  when  they  first  saw  the  light." 


06  THE  PEASANTRY 

"If  that  is  the  way  you  take  it,  Monsieur  Vatel,"  said  Ton- 
sard  coolly,  "you  will  find  out  that  we  Burgundians  are  no 
milksops." 

Vatel  went  off.  Charles,  but  little  curious  to  know  the 
meaning  of  the  enigma,  looked  in  at  the  tavern  door. 

"Come  up  to  the  chateau,  you  and  your  otter,  if  you  have 
one,"  said  he  to  old  Fourchon. 

The  old  man  hastily  rose  and  followed  Charles. 

"Look  here  now,  where  is  that  otter  of  yours?"  asked 
Charles,  smiling  incredulously. 

"Over  here,"  said  the  other,  turning  towards  the  Thune. 
The  Thune  was  a  little  stream  formed  by  the  overflow  of  the 
millstream  and  the  rivulets  in  the  park  at  the  Aigues.  The 
Thune  flows  by  the  side  of  the  road  until  it  reaches  the  little 
lake  at  Soulanges,  pouring  into  it  on  one  side,  and  out  at 
the  other,  turning  the  mills  at  Soulanges,  filling  the  ponds  by 
the  chateau,  and  finally  joining  the  Avonne  again. 

"There  she  is.  I  hid  her  in  the  bottom  of  the  stream  at  the 
Aigues  with  a  stone  tied  to  her  neck." 

As  the  old  man  stooped  and  raised  himself  again,  he  missed 
the  five-franc  piece  from  his  pocket ;  such  a  coin  was  there  so 
seldom  that  he  missed  the  novel  sensation  at  once. 

"Ov  '  the  rascals !"  he  cried,  "I  snare  otters,  and  they  snare 
their  fatht.,  they  do!  They  take  all  that  I  make  from  me, 
aw  tell  me  that  it  is  for  my  benefit.  Oh,  I  believe  them, 
when  they  talk  about  my  benefit.  If  it  weren't  for  poor 
Mouche,  the  comfort  of  my  old  age,  I  would  go  and  drown 
myself.  Children  are  the  ruin  of  their  fathers. — You  are 
not  married,  are  you,  Monsieur  Charles?  Never  marry,  and 
then  you  won't  have  to  repent  of  breeding  bad  blood.  And  I 
thinking  that  now  I  could  buy  some  tow!  There's  my  tow 
slipped  through  my  fingers.  That  gentleman,  and  a  nice 
gentleman  he  is,  gave  me  ten  francs.  Well,  for  one  thing, 
my  otter  has  gone  up  in  value  now  since  this  happened." 

Charles  put  so  little  belief  in  Daddy  Fourchon,  that  he  took 
these  lamentations,  which  for  once  were  full  of  a  very  real 
feeling,  for  part  of  the  preparation  of  a  "try  on,"  as  he  called 
it,  in  the  language  of  the  servants'  hall,  and  he  made  a  blun- 


THE  PEASANTRY  67 

der  by  betraying  his  opinion  in  a  smile,  which  the  spiteful  old 
man  saw  at  once. 

"Look  here,  Daddy  Fourchon,  you  must  behave  yourself, 
eh  ?  You  will  speak  to  madame  in  a  moment/'  said  Charles, 
who  noticed  the  profusion  of  brilliant  carbuncles  on  the  old 
man's  nose  and  cheek's. 

"I  know  what  I  am  about,  Charles,  as  you  shall  see.  And 
if  you  will  undertake  to  give  me  some  of  the  scraps  left  over 
from  breakfast,  and  a  couple  of  bottles  of  Spanish  wine  in 
the  kitchen,  I  will  tell  you  in  three  words  how  to  escape  a 
drubbing " 

"Tell  me,  and  Frangois  shall  have  the  master's  orders  to 
give  you  a  glass  of  wine,"  said  the  footman. 

"Is  it  a  bargain  ?" 

"A  bargain." 

"All  right.  You  shall  have  a  word  or  two  with  Catherine 
under  the  bridge  over  the  Avonne.  Godain  is  in  love  with 
her,  he  has  seen  you  together,  and  he  is  stupid  enough  to  be 
jealous.  Stupid,  I  say,  because  a  peasant  has  no  business 
with  sentiment,  that  is  for  rich  people.  So  if  you  go  to  Sou- 
langes  for  a  dance  with  her  at  the  Tivoli  on  the  fete  day,  you 
will  be  made  to  dance,  more  than  you  think  for !  Godain  is 
miserly,  and  has  a  nasty  temper;  he  is  just  the  one  to  break 
your  arm,  and  you  could  not  summons  him  for  it " 

"Too  dear !  Catherine  is  a  fine  girl,  but  she  is  not  worth 
that''  said  Charles.  "And  what  makes  Godain  take  it  amiss ? 
The  others  don't." 

"Oh !  he  is  enough  in  love  with  her  to  marry  her." 

"There  is  a  woman  that  will  be  beaten !"  said  Charles. 

"That  is  as  may  be,"  returned  the  grandfather.  "Tonsard 
never  lifted  a  hand  against  her  mother,  so  frightened  he  was 
that  she  should  go  off  and  leave  him,  and  Catherine  takes 
after  her  mother.  A  wife  that  can  bestir  herself  is  worth  a 
good  deal. — And  besides,  at  a  game  of  hot  cockles  with  Cath- 
erine, Godain,  strong  though  he  is,  would  not  come  off  best." 

"Wait,  Daddy  Fourchon.,  here  are  forty  sous  for  you  to 
drink  to  my  health  in  case  we  mayn't  be  able  to  get  a  sup  of 
Alicante." 


68  THE  PEASANTRY 

Old  Fourchon  looked  away  as  he  pocketed  the  money,  lest 
Charles  should  see  the  ironical  glee  in  his  eyes,  which  he  could 
not  hide. 

"Catherine  is  a  rare  wench  for  a  glass,"  said  the  old  man ; 
"she  is  fond  of  malaga ;  you  ought  to  tell  her  to  come  to  the 
Aigues  for  some,  you  ninny !" 

Charles  looked  at  old  Fourehon  with  undisguised  admira- 
tion; how  should  he  guess  how  immensely  important  it  was 
to  the  General's  enemies  to  introduce  one  more  spy  into  the 
house  ? 

"The  General  must  be  pleased,"  the  old  man  went  on ;  "the 
peasants  are  keeping  very  quiet.  What  does  he  say  about  it  ? 
Is  he  still  satisfied  with  Sibilet  ?" 

"Nobody  gives  Sibilet  any  trouble  except  Michaud;  they 
say  he  will  contrive  to  make  him  lose  his  place." 

"Two  of  a  trade !"  commented  old  Fourchon.  "I'll  lay  to 
it  that  you  yourself  would  be  glad  to  see  Frangois  turned  off 
to  step  into  his  place." 

"Lord,  Frangois  gets  twelve  hundred  francs,"  said 
Charles;  "but  they  won't  turn  him  away,  he  knows  the  Gen- 
eral's secrets 

"Just  as  Ma'am  Michaud  knew  my  lady's,  eh  ?"  said  Four- 
chon, eyeing  Charles  keenly.  "Look  here,  my  lad,  do  you 
know  whether  the  General  and  my  lady  have  rooms  apart  ?" 

'  "Of  course,  or  the  master  would  not  be  so  fond  of  madame 
as  he  is." 

"Don't  you  know  any  more  ?"  asked  Fourchon ;  but  no  more 
could  be  said,  for  by  this  time  the  pair  were  under  the  kitchen 
windows. 


THE  ENEMIES  FACE  TO  FACE 


As  soon  as  breakfast  was  begun,  Francois,  the  first  valet-de- 
chambre,  came  to  Blondet,  saying  in  a  low  voice,  but  quite 


THE  PEASANTRY  69 

loud  enough  to  be  overheard  by  the  Count,  "Fourchon's  little 
boy  says  that  they  caught  the  otter  at  last,  sir,  and  he  wants  to 
know  if  you  would  like  to  have  the  animal  before  taking  it  to 
the  sub-prefect  at  Ville-aux-Fayes." 

]j5mile  Blondet,  past  master  in  mystification,  flushed  red 
in  spite  of  himself,  like  a  girl  who  hears  an  equivocal  anec- 
dote, and  understands  the  drift  of  it. 

"Aha !  you  have  been  out  otter-hunting  with  old  Fourchon 
this  'morning !"  cried  the  General,  bursting  into  a  roar  of 
laughter. 

"What  is  it  ?"  asked  the  Countess,  disconcerted  by  her  hus- 
band's hilarity. 

"When  a  clever  man  like  Blondet  lets  old  Fourchon  take 
him  in,  an  old  Cuirassier  need  not  blush  to  have  gone  hunt- 
ing that  same  otter,  who  looks  uncommonly  like  the  third 
horse  which  you  never  see  and  always  pay  for  when  you  travel 
post/' 

And  in  a  voice  broken  by  peals  of  laughter,  the  General 
managed  to  add,  "After  that,  I  do  not  wonder  that  you 
changed  your  boots  and  trousers,  you  must  have  been  made 
to  swim. — As  for  me,  I  was  not  hoaxed  quite  so  far  as  you — 
I  stopped  on  the  bank — but  then  you  are  so  much  cleverer 
than  I  am " 

"You  forget,  dear,  that  I  do  not  know  what  you  are  talkr 
ing  about/'  put  in  Mme.  de  Montcornet,  with  a  trace  of  pique, 
caused  by  Blondet's  confusion.  At  this  the  General  recovered 
his  gravity,  and  Blondet  himself  told  the  story  of  his  otter 
hunt. 

"But  if  they  really  have  an  otter,"  said  the  Countess,  "they 
are  not  so  much  to  blame,  poor  things." 

"Yes ;  only  no  one  has  seen  the  otter  for  these  ten  years !" 
returned  the  -pitiless  General. 

"M.  le  Comte,"  said  Frangois,  "the  child  vows  and  declares 
that  he  has  caught  one " 

"If  they  have  an  otter,  I  will  pay  them  for  it,"  said  the 
General. 


70  THE  PEASANTRY 

"Providence  can  never  have  condemned  the  Aigues  to  be 
without  otters  for  ever,"  put  in  the  Abbe  Brossette. 

"Oh,  M.  le  Cure,  if  you  let  loose  Providence  upon  us " 

exclaimed  Blondet. 

"But  who  can  have  come  ?"  the  Countess  asked  quickly. 

"Mouche,  my  lady,  the  little  boy  that  always  goes  about 
with  old  Fourchon,"  the  servant  answered. 

"Send  him  in — if  madame  has  no  objection,"  said  the  Gen- 
eral. "He  will  perhaps  amuse  you." 

"But  at  any  rate  we  ought  to  know  what  to  believe,  ought 
we  not  ?"  asked  the  Countess. 

A  few  moments  later  Mouche  appeared  in  his  almost  naked 
condition.  At  this  apparition  of  poverty  personified  in  the 
splendid  dining-room,  when  the  price  of  a  single  mirror  on 
the  walls  would  have  been  a  fortune  to  the  barefooted,  bare- 
legged, bare-headed  child,  it  was  impossible  not  to  give  way 
to  charitable  impulses.  Mouche's  eyes,  like  glowing  coals, 
gazed  from  the  glories  of  the  room  to  the  riches  on  the  table. 

"You  have  no  mother,  of  course?"  said  the  Countess,  un- 
able to  explain  such  destitution  in  any  other  way. 

"No,  my  lady ;  mammy  died  of  fretting  because  daddy  went 
for  a  soldier  in  1812,  and  she  never  saw  him  again;  he  did 
not  marry  her  with  the  papers  before  he  went,  and  he  was 
frozen,  saving  your  presence.  But  I  have  my  grandad  Four- 
chon, who  is  very  good  to  me,  though  he  does  beat  me  now  and 
again  like  a  Jesus." 

"How  does  it  happen,  dear,  that  any  one  on  your  land  is 
so  wretched?"  asked  the  Countess,  looking  at  the  General. 

"No  one  need  be  wretched  here,  Madame  la  Comtesse,  un- 
less they  choose,"  said  the  Cure.  "M.  le  Comte  means  well 
by  them,  but  you  have  to  do  with  a  people  without  religion, 
people  who  have  but  one  idea — how  to  live  at  your  expense." 

"But,  my  dear  cure,"  said  Blondet,  "you  are  here  to  keep 
them  in  order." 

"My  lord  Bishop  sent  me  here  as  a  missionary  among 
heathen,  monsieur,"  said  the  Abbe  Brossette;  "but,  as  I  had 
the  honor  of  pointing  out  to  him,  our  heathen  in  France  are 


THE  PEASANTRY  71 

unapproachable;  they  make  it  a  rule  not  to  listen  to  us;  now 
in  America  you  can  appeal  to  the  savages." 

"M'sieu  le  Cure,  they  do  a  little  for  me  now,  but  if  I  went 
to  your  church  they  would  give  over  helping  me  altogether. 
I  should  have  them  calling  'shovel  hats'  after  me." 

"But  religion  ought  to  begin  by  giving  him  trousers,  my 
dear  Abbe,"  said  Blondet.  "Do  not  your  missions  begin  by 
coaxing  the  savage  ?" 

"He  would  have  sold  his  clothes  before  long,"  the  Abbe 
answered,  lowering  his  voice,  "and  my  stipend  does  not  allow 
me  to  traffic  in  souls  in  that  way." 

"M.  le  Cure  is  right,"  said  the  General,  who  was  looking 
at  Mouche.  The  urchin's  tactics  consisted  in  feigning  igno- 
rance whenever  he  had  the  worst  of  it. 

"The  little  rascal  is  evidently  intelligent  enough  to  know 
right  from  wrong,"  continued  the  General.  "He  is  old  enough 
to  work,  and  his  one  thought  is  how  to  transgress  and  escape 
punishment.  He  is  well  known  to  the  foresters.  Before  I 
was  mayor  he  knew,  young  as  he  was,  that  if  a  man  is  witness 
of  a  trespass  on  his  own  land,  he  cannot  lodge  a  complaint 
himself,  and  he  would  brazenly  stay  in  my  meadows  grazing 
his  cows  under  my  eyes ;  now,  he  makes  off." 

"Oh !  that  is  very  wrong,"  said  the  Countess ;  "we  ought 
not  to  take  other  people's  goods,  dear  child." 

"One  must  eat,  my  lad}r.  Grandad  gives  me  more  cuffs 
than  crusts,  and  it  makes  you  feel  hollow  inside,  does  a  hiding. 
When  the  cows  have  milk,  I  help  myself  to  a  little,  and  that 
keeps  life  in  me.  Is  his  lordship  so  poor  that  he  can't  spare 
a  little  grass  so  that  I  may  drink  ?" 

"Why,  perhaps  he  has  had  nothing  to  eat  to-day,"  said  .the 
Countess,  touched  by  such  dire  poverty.  "Just  let  him  have 
.some  bread  and  the  rest  of  the  fowl;  give  him  some  break- 
fast in  fact,"  she  said,  looking  at  the  servant. — "Where  do 
you  sleep  ?"  she  added. 

"Anywhere,  wherever  they  will  let  us  sleep  in  the  winter, 
my  lady,  and  out  of  doors  in  the  summer/' 

"How  old  are  you?" 


72  THE  PEASANTRY 

"Twelve." 

"Then  something  might  be  made  of  him  yet/'  said  the 
Countess,  turning  to  her  husband. 

"Might  make  a  soldier,"  said  the  General  gruffly;  "he  is 
in  good  training  for  it.  I  myself  have  been  through  quite  as 
much  of  that  sort  of  thing  as  he  has,  and  yet  here  I  am." 

"Asking  your  pardon,  General,  I  am  not  on  the  register," 
said  the  child.  "I  shall  not  be  drawn.  My  poor  mother  was 
not  married,  and  I  was  born  out  in  the  fields ;  I  am  a  son  of 
the  airih,  as  grandad  says.  Mammy  saved  me  from  the 
militia.  I  don't  call  myself  Mouche  any  more  than  anything 
else.  Grandad  showed  me  plainly  where  I  was  well  off.  The 
Government  haven't  got  me  on  their  papers,  and  when  I  am 
old  enough  to  be  drawn  I  shall  go  on  my  travels  through 
France.  They  won't  catch  me!" 

"Do  you  love  your  grandfather?"  asked  the  Countess,  try- 
ing to  read  the  heart  of  twelve  years  old. 

"Lord,  he  cuffs  me  whenever  the  fit  takes  him,  but  there  is 
no  help  for  it.  He  is  so  funny,  such  a  good  sort !  And  then 
he  says  that  he  is  taking  pay  for  teaching  me  to  read  and 
write." 

"Can  you  read?"  asked  the  Count. 

"I  should  think  I  could,  M.  le  Comte,  and  fine  writing  too ! 
true  as  it  is  that  we  have  an  otter !" 

"What  is  this  ?"  the  Count  asked,  holding  out  a  newspaper. 

"The  Cu-o-ti-dienne"  pronounced  Mouche,  without  stumb- 
ling more  than  three  times  over  the  word.  Everybody,  even 
the  Abbe  Brossette,  joined  in  the  laugh  that  followed. 

"Well,"  cried  Mouche  sulkily,  "you  are  setting  me  to 
read  them  newspapers,  and  grandad  says  that  they  are  written 
for  rich  people,  but  you  always  get  to  know  later  on  what 
there  is  inside  them." 

"The  child  is  right,  General;  he  makes  me  long  to  meet 
the  man  who  got  the  better  of  me  this  morning  once  again," 
said  Blondet ;  "I  see  that  there  was  a  touch  of  Mouche  in  his 
hoax." 

Mouche  understood  perfectly  well  that  he  was  there  for  the 


THE  PEASANTRY  73 

master's  amusement.  Old  Fourchon's  scholar  showed  him- 
self worthy  of  his  master ;  he  began  to  cry. 

"How  can  you  make  fun  of  a  barefooted  child  ?"  asked  the 
Countess. 

"A  child  who  thinks  it  quite  natural  that  his  grandfather 
should  take  his  pay  for  his  schooling  in  slaps  ?"  asked  Blon- 
det. 

"Poor  little  one,  look  here/'  said  the  lady;  "have  you 
caught  an  otter  ?" 

"Yes,  my  lady,  as  true  as  that  you  are  the  prettiest  lady  I 
have  seen  or  ever  shall  see,"  said  the  child,  wiping  away  his 
tears. 

"Just  let  us  see  this  otter,"  said  the  General. 

"Oh,  M'sieu  le  Comte,  grandad  hid  her  away;  but  she  was 
still  kicking  when  we  were  at  the  ropewalk.  You  can  send 
for  my  grandad,  for  he  wants  to  sell  her  himself." 

"Take  him  to  the  kitchen  and  give  him  his  breakfast,  and 
send  Charles  for  old  Fourchon  meanwhile,"  the  Countess  bade 
Frangois.  "And  see  if  you  can,  find  some  shoes  and  trousers 
and  a  jacket  for  the  boy.  Those  who  come  here  naked  must 
go  away  again  clothed 

"God  bless  you,  dear  lady,"  said  Mouche  as  he  went. 
"M'sieu  le  Cure  may  be  sure  that  the  clothes  you  give  me 
will  be  laid  up  for  high  days  and  holidays." 

Fjmile  and  Mme.  Montcornet  exchanged  glances.  This  last 
remark  surprised  them.  "That  boy  is  not  so  silly,"  their 
looks  seemed  to  tell  the  cure. 

"Certainly,  madame,"  said  the  cure  as  soon  as  the  boy  had 
gone,  "you  cannot  call  a  reckoning  with  poverty.  To  my 
thinking,  the  poor  have  justifications  which  God  alone  can 
see  and  take  into  account,  justifications  in  physical  causes 
which  often  produce'  baleful  results,  and  other  justifications 
springing  from  character,  produced  by  tendencies,  blame- 
worthy as  we  think,  but  yet  the  result  of  qualities  which, 
unfortunately  for  society,  find  no  outlet.  The  miracles 
worked  on  battlefields  have  taught  us  that  the  lowest  scoun- 
drel may  have  the  makings  of  a  hero  in  him.  .  .  .  But 


74  THE  PEASANTRY 

here  you  are  placed  in  a  very  unusual  position ;  and  if  reflec- 
tion does  not  keep  pace  with  benevolence,  you  run  the  risk 
of  subsidizing  your  .enemies ' 

"Enemies?"  echoed  the  Countess. 

"Bitter  enemies,"  the  General  spoke  gravely. 

"Old  Fourchon  and  his  son-in-law  Tonsard  represent  the 
whole  intelligence  of  the  poorest  folk  in  the  valley ;  their  ad- 
vice is  asked  and  taken  in  the  most  trifling  matters.  Their 
Machiavelism  reaches  an  incredible  pitch.  You  may  take  this 
for  granted,  that  ten  peasants  in  a  wineshop  are  the  small 
change  for  a  big  intrigue " 

As  he  was  speaking,  Frangois  announced  M.  Sibilet. 

"This  is  the  minister  of  finance,"  said  the  General,  smil- 
ing; "send  him  in. — He  will  explain  the  gravity  of  the  situa- 
tion to  you,"  he  added,  glancing  from  his  wife  to  Blondet. 

"And  so  much  the  better  in  that  he  will  scarcely  make  the 
least  of  it,"  said  the  cure,  in  a  scarcely  audible  voice. 

Blondet  saw  for  the  first  time  a  personage  whose  acquaint- 
ance he  wished  to  make — the  steward  of  the  Aigues,  of  whoTn 
he  had  heard  much  since  his  arrival.  Sibilet  was  a  man  of 
thirty  or  thereabouts;  he  was  of  middle  height,  with  a  sullen, 
unpleasant  face,  which  a  laugh  seemed  to  suit  ill.  The  eyes 
of  changing  green,  under  an  anxious  brow,  looked  different 
ways,  and  thus  disguised  his  thoughts.  His  long,  straight 
hair  gave  him  a  somewhat  clerical  appearance;  he  wore  a 
brown  greatcoat  and  a  black  waistcoat  and  trousers;  he  was 
knock-kneed,  and  the  trousers  imperfectly  concealed  this  de- 
fect. In  spite  of  his  unwholesome  appearance,  sallow  com- 
plexion, and  flabby  muscles,  Sibilet  had  a  strong  constitu- 
tion. The  somewhat  gruff  tones  of  his  voice  harmonized  with 
the  generally  unprepossessing  appearance  of  the  man. 

Blondet  and  the  Abbe  Brossette  exchanged  a  furtive  glance, 
and  in  the  fleeting  expression  in  the  eyes  of  the  young  ec- 
clesiastic Blondet  read  the  confirmation  of  his  own  sus- 
picions. 

"You  set  down  the  peasants'  thefts  at  about  one-fourth  the 
value  of  the  yearly  returns,  do  you  not,  my  dear  Sibilet?" 
asked  the  General. 


THE  PEASANTRY  75 

"At  a  good  deal  more  than  that,  M.  le  CoTnte,"  returned 
the  steward.  "Your  paupers  take  more  than  the  Government 
asks  of  you.  There  is  a  young  rogue  called  Mouche  who 
gleans  his  two  bushels  per  day ;  and  old  women,  whom  any  one 
would  think  at  their  last  gasp,  will  recover  health  and  youth 
and  the  use  of  their  limbs  at  harvest-time.  That  is  a  phe- 
nomenon which  you  can  see  for  yourself,"  continued  Bibilet, 
turning  to  Blondet,  "for  we  shall  begin  in  six  days'  tin^e ;  the 
rain  in  July  has  made  the  harvest  late  this  year.  Wu  shall 
be  cutting  the  rye  next  week.  Nobody  ought  to  glean  without 
a  certificate  of  poverty  from  the  mayor  of  the  commune,  and 
a  commune  ought  on  no  account  to  allow  any  but  the  very 
poor  to  glean  at  all,  but  all  the  communes  in  the  district 
glean  over  each  other  without  certificates.  For  sixty  poor 
people  in  the  commune,  there  are  forty  more  who  will  not  do 
a  day's  work ;  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  even  those  who  have  set 
up  for  themselves  will  leave  their  work  to  glean  in  the  fields 
or  the  vineyards. 

"Here  these  folk  will  pick  up  three  hundred  bushels  a  day 
among  them,  and  the  harvest  lasts  a  fortnight — four  thousand 
five  hundred  bushels  taken  away  in  the  canton.  So  the  glean- 
ing amounts  to  about  one-tenth  of  the  whole  harvest;  and  as 
to  the  abuse  of  grazing,  that  makes  a  hole  in  our  profits,  about 
a  sixth  of  the  value  of  our  meadows  goes  in  that  way.  Then 
there  are  the  woods,  they  do  incalculable  mischief  there,  cut- 
ting down  the  young  saplings  six  years  old. — The  damage 
done  to  your  estate,  M.  le  Comte,  mounts  up  to  twenty  and 
some  odd  thousand  francs  per  annum." 

"Well,  madame,"  said  the  General,  "do  you  hear  that  ?" 

"Is  it  not  exaggerated?"  asked  Mme.  de  Montcornet. 

"No,  unhappily  it  is  not,  madame,"  said  the  cure.  "There 
is  poor  Father  Niseron,  the  white-haired  old  man  who  unites 
in  person  all  the  offices  of  bellringer,  beadle,  sexton,  sacristan, 
and  chanter,  in  spite  of  his  republican  opinions — in  fact,  he 
is  the  grandfather  of  that  little  Genevieve  whom  you  placed 
under  Mme.  Michaud — 

"La  Pechina !"  said  Sibilet,  interrupting  the  Abbe. 

"La  Pechina  ?"  asked  the  Countess.    "What  do  you  mean  ?" 
VOL.  10—31 


76  THE  PEASANTRY 

"Mme.  la  Comtesse,  when  you  saw  little  Genevi&ve  by 
the  wayside  looking  so  forlorn,  you  exclaimed  in  Italian : 
Piccina!  And  now  it  has  become  a  nickname,  and  so  cor- 
rupted that  the  whole  commune  knows  your  protegee  by  the 
name  of  the  Pechina.  She  is  the  only  one  who  comes  to 
church,  poor  little  thing,  with  Mme.  Michaud  and  Mme.  Sibi- 
let,"  added  the  cure. 

"Yes,  and  she  is  none  the  better  off  for  that,"  said  the 
steward.  "She  is  persecuted  for  her  religion." 

"Well,"  continued  the  cure,  "this  poor  old  man  of  seventy- 
two  picks  up  a  bushel  and  a  half  in  a  day,  and  does  it  hon- 
estly moreover,  but  he  is  too  conscientious  to  sell  his  gleanings 
as  the  rest  of  them  do;  he  keeps  the  corn  for  his  own  con- 
sumption. As  a  favor  to  me,  M.  Langlume,  your  deputy, 
grinds  his  corn  for  nothing,  and  my  servant  bakes  his  bread 
with  mine." 

"I  had  forgotten  my  little  protegee,"  said  the  Countess, 
startled  by  Sibilet's  remarks. — "Your  coming  has  put  other 
things  out  of  my  head,"  she  added,  turning  to  Blondet.  "But 
after  breakfast  we  will  go  to  the  Avonne  gate,  and  I  will  show 
you  a  living  woman  like  a  fifteenth  century  painter's  dream." 

As  she  spoke,  a  pair  of  cracked  sabots  was  put  down  with 
a  clatter  at  the  kitchen  door,  and  old  Fourchon  was  an- 
nounced by  Frangois.  The  Countess  nodded  permission,  and 
Frangois  brought  the  old  man  into  the  room,  Mouche  fol- 
lowing behind  with  his  mouth  full,  and  holding  the  otter  by 
a  string  tied  to  its  yellow  paws,  ribbed  like  a  duck's  foot.  Old 
Fourchon  glanced  at  the  gentry  seated  at  table,  gave  Sibilet 
the  half-defiant,  half-servile  look  that  veils  a  peasant's 
thoughts ;  then  he  brandished  the  amphibian  triumphantly. 

"Here  she  is !"  he  cried,  looking  at  Blondet. 

"That  is  my  otter,  though,"  demurred  the  Parisian;  "I 
paid  plenty  for  it." 

"Oh,  your  otter  got  away,  my  dear  sir !"  retorted  old  Four- 
chon. "She  is  in  her  hole  at  this  minute;  she  had  no  mind 
to  come  out  of  it;  she  was  the  female,  while  this  here  is  the 
male!  Mouche  saw  it  come  out,  a  long  way  off,  after  you 


THE  PEASANTRY  77 

had  gone.  'Tis  as  true  as  that  M.  le  Comte  covered  himself 
with  glory  along  with  his  Cuirassiers  at  Waterloo !  The  otter 
is  as  much  mine  as  the  Aigues  belongs  to  his  lordship  the 
General.  .  .  .  But  for  twenty  francs  the  otter  is  yours, 
otherwise  I  will  take  it  to  our  sub-perfect.  If  M.  Gourdon 
thinks  it  too  dear,  as  we  went  hunting  together  this  morning, 
I  give  the  gentleman  from  Paris  the  preference,  as  is  but 
fair." 

"Twenty  francs !"  put  in  Blondet.  "In  plain  French,  that 
is  not  exactly  what  you  might  call  giving  me  the  preference." 

"Eh !  my  dear  sir,"  cried  the  old  man,  "I  know  so  little 
French,  that  if  you  like  I  will  ask  you  for  them  in  Burgun- 
dian ;  it's  all  one  to  me  so  long  as  I  get  the  francs,  I  will  speak 
Latin :  latinus,  latina,  latinum.  After  all,  it  is  only  what  you 
promised  me  yourself  this  morning ;  and  besides,  my  children 
have  taken  your  mon«y  from  me  already ;  I  cried  about  it  as 
I  came  along.  You  ask  Charles — I  don't  like  to  summons 
them  for  ten  francs  and  publish  their  bad  doings  at  the  court. 
As  soon  as  I  make  a  few  sous  they  get  them  away  from  me 
by  making  me  drink. — It  is  hard  that  I  can't  go  to  take  a 
glass  of  wine  in  my  own  daughter's  house,  but  that  is  what 
children  are  in  these  days ! — That  is  what  comes  of  the  Revo- 
lution ;  it's  everything  for  the  children  now,  and  their  fathers 
are  put  upon.  Ah !  I  am  eddicating  Mouche  here  in  quite 
another  way.  The  little  rapscallion  is  fond  of  me,"  he  re- 
marked, administering  a  slap  to  his  grandson. 

"It  looks  to  me  as  if  you  were  making  him  into  a  petty 
thief,  just  like  the  rest  of  them,"  said  Sibilet,  "for  he  never 
lies  down  without  something  on  his  conscience." 

"Oh!  Master  Sibilet,  his  conscience  is  easier  than  what 
yours  is !  .  .  .  Poor  child,  what  does  he  take  ?  A  trifle 
of  grass,  that  is  better  than  throttling  a  man !  Lord,  he 
doesn't  know  mathematics  like  you;  he  doesn't  understand 
subtraction  and  addition  and  multiplication.  .  .  .  You 
do  a  lot  of  harm,  you  do !  .  You  tell  people  that  we  are  a  pack 
of  brigands,  and  you  are  at  the  bottom  of  the  division  be- 


78  THE  PEASANTRY 

tween  his  lordship  there,  who  is  a  good  man,  and  the  rest  of 
us,  who  are  good  folk.  There  ain't  a  better  place  than  this  is. 

"Look  here !  Have  we  money  coming  in  ?  Don't  we  go 
without  clothes  to  our  backs,  as  you  may  say,  Mouche  and  I  ? 
Fine  sheets  we  sleep  in,  bleached  in  the  dew  every  morning; 
and  unless  you  grudge  us  the  air  we  breathe,  and  the  light 
of  the  sun,  and  our  drink,  there  is  nothing  that  I  see  that 
any  one  can  want  to  take  from  us !  The  bourgeois  do  their 
robberies  in  the  chimney  corner,  and  it  pays  much  better  than 
picking  up  things  that  lie  about  in  corners  of  the  wood.  There 
are  no  foresters  nor  mounted  keepers  for  Master  Gaubertin, 
who  came  here  bare  as  a  worm,  and  has  two  million  francs 
this  day. 

"  'Thieves !'  is  soon  said ;  but  there  is  old  Guerbet,  as  col- 
lects the  taxes,  has  gone  out  of  our  village  at  night  with  his 
receipts  these  fifteen  years,  and  nobody  has  ever  asked  him 
for  two  farthings.  That  is  not  the  way  in  a  country  of 
thieves.  We  are  not  much  the  richer  for  theft.  Just  show 
me  this — whether  it  is  we  or  you  who  live  by  doing  nothing  ?" 

"If  you  had  not  been  idle,  you  would  have  something  to 
live  on,"  said  the  cure.  "God  blesses  work." 

"I  don't  like  to  contradict  you,  Mosieur  1'Abbe,  for  you 
know  more  than  I  do,  and  perhaps  you  can  explain  this  to 
me.  Here  am  I, am  I  not?  A  lazy, idle  sot,  a  good-for-nothing 
of  an  old  Fourchon,  who  has  had  some  education,  has  been  a 
farmer,  fell  into  difficulties,  and  never  got  out  of  them ! 
.  .  .  Well,  now,  where  is  the  difference  between  me  and 
that  good,  honest  old  man  Niseron,  a  vinedresser,  seventy 
years  old  (for  he  and  I  are  of  an  age),  who  has  been  digging 
the  soil  ?  up  before  daylight  every  morning  to  go  to  his  work, 
till  he  has  a  body  like  iron  and  a  noble  soul.  I  see  that  he 
is  just  as  poor  as  I  am.  There  is  La  Pechina,  his  grand- 
daughter, gone  out  to  service  with  Ma'am  Michaud,  while 
my  little  Mouche  is  free  as  the  air!  Is  the  poor  old  man 
rewarded  for  his  virtues  in  the  same  way  that  I  am  punished 
for  my  vices  ?  He  does  not  know  what  a  glass  of  wine  is ;  he 


THE  PEASANTRY  79 

is  as  sober  as  an  apostle;  he  digs  graves  for  the  dead,  and 
I  set  the  living  a-dancing.  He  has  dined  with  Duke  Hum- 
phrey, while  I  have  tippled  down  the  liquor  like  a  rollicking 
devil-may-care  creature.  And  one  has  come  just  as  far  as 
the  other;  we  have  the  same  snow  on  our  heads,  the  same 
cash  in  our  pockets,  he  rings  the  bell,  and  I  make  the  rope. 
He  is  a  Republican,  and  I  am  a  sinner,  and  not  even  a  publi- 
can. Let  the  peasant  do  ill  or  well,  according  to  your  notions, 
he  will  end  as  he  began,  in  rags,  and  you  in  fine  linen " 

Nobody  interrupted  old  Fourchon,  who  seemed  to  owe  his 
eloquence  to  the  bottled  wine;  at  the  outset  Sibilet  tried  to 
cut  him  short,  but  at  a  sign  from  Blondet  the  steward  was 
dumb.  The  cure,  the  General,  and  the  Countess  gathered 
from  the  journalist's  glances  that  he  wished  to  study  the 
problem  of  pauperism  from  the  life,  and  perhaps  to  be  quits 
with  old  Fourchon. 

"And  what  do  you  mean  about  Mouche's  education  ?  How 
do  you  set  to  work  to  bring  him  up  to  be  a  better  child  to  you 
than  your  daughters?" 

"Does  he  so  much  as  speak  to  him  of  God?"  asked  the 
cure. 

"Oh!  not  I,  Mosieur  le  Cure,  I  be'ant  telling  him  to  fear 
God,  but  men.  God  is  good,  and  has  promised,  according  to 
you  parsons,  that  we  shall  have  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  as 
the  rich  keep  the  kingdom  of  earth.  I  say  to  him — 'Mouche ! 
fear  the  jail !  for  you  go  out  of  jail  to  the  scaffold.  Never 
steal  anything ;  make  them  give  you  what  you  want !  Stealing 
leads  to  murder,  and  murder  brings  down  the  justice  of  men 
on  you.  The  razor  of  justice — that  is  to  be  feared ;  it  secures 
the  rich  man's  slumber  against  the  poor  man  that  lies  awake. 
Learn  to  read.  Education  will  put  it  in  your  power  to  make 
money  under  cover  of  the  law,  like  clever  M.  Gaubertin.  You 
will  be  a  steward,  eh !  like  M.  Sibilet,  whom  his  lordship  the 
Count  allows  his  rations.  The  great  thing  is  to  keep  well  with 
the  rich;  there  are  crumbs  under  rich  men's  tables/  That 
is  what  I  call  a  fine  education,  and  thorough  too.  So  the 
young  whelp  keeps  on  this  side  of  the  law.  He  will  be  a 
steady  boy ;  he  will  take  care  of  me !" 


80  THE  PEASANTRY 

"And  what  will  you  make  of  him  ?"  inquired  Blondet. 

"A  gentleman's  servant,  to  begin  with,"  answered  Four- 
chon,  "because  seeing  the  masters  from  near,  his  education  will 
be  thoroughly  finished,  that  it  will !  Good  example  will  teach 
him  to  make  his  way  with  the  law  to  back  him  like  the  rest 
of  you!  ...  If  his  lordship  will  take  him  into  his 
stables  to  learn  to  rub  down  the  horses,  the  little  fellow  will 
be  very  much  pleased — seeing  that  though  he  fears  men,  he 
js  not  afraid  cf  animals." 

"You  are  a  clever  man,  Daddy  Fourchon,"  began  Blondet. 
"You  know  quite  well  what  you  are  saying,  and  there  is  some 
sense  in  what  you  say." 

"Oh !  my  certy !  no,  I  have  left  my  senses  at  the  Grand-I- 
Vert  along  with  my  two  five-franc  pieces." 

"How  came  such  a  man  as  you  to  drift  into  such  poverty? 
For  as  things  are  now,  a  peasant  has  only  himself  to  thank 
if  he  does  badly;  he  is  free,  he  can  become  rich.  It  is  not  as 
it  used  to  be  any  longer.  If  a  peasant  can  scrape  a  little 
money  together,  he  finds  a  bit  of  land,  he  can  buy  it,  and  he 
is  his  own  master." 

"I  saw  the  old  times,  and  I  see  the  new,  my  dear  learned 
sir,"  replied  Fourchon;  "they  have  put  up  a  new  signboard, 
but  the  liquor  is  the  same  as  ever.  To-day  is  only  yesterday's 
younger  brother.  There  !  you  put  that  in  your  paper !  En- 
franchised, are  we  ?  We  still  belong  to  the  same"  village,  and 
the  seigneur  is  there  still ;  I  call  him  Hard  Labor. — The  hoe, 
which  is  all  our  property,  has  not  passed  out  of  our  hands. 
And  anyhow,  whether  we  work  for  the  seigneur  or  for  the 
tax  collector,  who  takes  the  best  part  of  what  we  make,  we 
have  to  sweat  our  lives  out " 

"But  why  not  choose  a  handicraft  and  try  your  luck  else- 
where?" asked  Blondet. 

"Are  you  talking  to  me  of  setting  out  to  seek  my  fortune  ? 
— But  where  should  I  go?  I  must  have  a  passport,  which 
costs  forty  sous,  before  I  can  go  out  of  the  department.  These 
forty  years  I  have  not  been  able  to  hear  a  slut  of  a  two-franc 
piece  jangle  with  another  in  my  pocket.  If  you  go  straight 


THE  PEASANTRY  81 

before  you,  for  every  village  you  come  to  you  want  a  three- 
franc  piece,  and  there  are  not  many  of  the  Fourchon  family 
that  have  the  wherewithal  to  visit  six  villages!  Nothing 
drags  us  from  our  communes  except  the  conscription.  And 
what  does  the  army  do  for  us  ?  The  colonel  lives  on  the  com- 
mon soldier  as  the  master  lives  on  the  laborer.  Does  one 
colonel  out  of  a  hundred  spring  from  our  loins  ?  In  the  army, 
as  in  the  rest  of  the  world,  for  one  that  grows  rich  a  hundred 
drop  out.  F.or  want  of  what  ?  God  knows — so  do  the  money- 
lenders. 

"So  the  best  thing  we  can  do  is  to  stop  in  our  communes, 
where  we  are  penned  up  like  sheep  by  the  force  of  circum- 
stances, just  as  we  used  to  be  by  the  seigneurs.  And  I  care 
not  a  rap  who  nails  me  here.  Nailed  down  by  necessity,  or 
nailed  down  by  the  nobles,  we  are  condemned  for  life  to 
labor  on  the  soil.  Wherever  we  are,  we  turn  up  the 
soil,  and  dig  it  and  dung  it,  and  work  for  you  that 
are  born  rich,  as  we  are  born  poor.  The  mass  will  always 
be  the  same ;  what  it  is,  it  p.lways  is.  Those  of  us  who  go  up 
in  the  world  are  fewer  than  those  of  you  who  come  down. 
We  know  this  very  well,  if  we  haven't  book  learning,  that  it 
won't  do  to  be  down  upon  us  at  every  moment.  We  leave 
you  in  peace ;  let  us  live.  Otherwise,  if  this  goes  on,  you  will 
be  forced  to  feed  us  in  your  prisons,  where  we  are  far  more 
comfortable  than  on  our  straw. — You  are  our  masters,  and 
you  mean  to  remain  so ;  we  shall  always  be  enemies,  to-day  as 
for  these  last  thirty  years.  You  have  everything,  we  have 
nothing,  so  you  cannot  expect  us  to  be  your  friends  yet." 

"That  is  what  is  called  a  declaration  of  war,"  said  the  Gen- 
eral. 

<rWhen  the  Aigues  belonged  to  the  poor  lady  that  is  gone 
(the  Lord  have  mercy  on  her.  soul,  for  she  was  a  wanton  singer 
in  her  youth)  we  were  well  off,  your  lordship.  Her  let  us  pick 
up  a  living  in  her  fields,  and  take  our  firing  in  her  forests ;  her 
was  none  the  poorer  for  that!  And  you,  that  are  at  least 
as  rich  as  she  was,  hunt  us  down  like  wild  beasts,  nor  more 
nor  less,  and  drag  the  poor  people  before  the  magistrate.  Ah, 


82  THE  PEASANTRY 

well !  no  good  will  come  of  that.  You  will  have  some  ugly 
doings  laid  at  your  door.  I  have  just  seen  your  forester,  that 
curmudgeon  of  a  Vatel,  all  but  kill  a  poor  old  woman  about 
a  stick  of  firewood.  They  will  make  an  enemy  of  the  people 
of  you;  they  will  grow  bitter  against  you  at  'up-sittings'  as 
they  work  and  talk;  they  will  curse  you  as  heartily  as  they 
used  to  bless  madame  that  is  gone.  The  poor  man's  curse 
grows,  your  lordship;  it  grows  higher  than  the  biggest  of 
your  oak-trees,  and  the  oak-tree  grows  into  the  gallows-tree. 
.  .  .  Nobody  here  tells  you  the  truth;  this  is  truth  that 
I  am  telling  you !  Death  may  come  to  me  any  morning ;  I 
have  not  much  to  lose  by  letting  you  have  the  truth  for  less 
than  market  price.  ...  I  play  tunes  along  with  Ver- 
michel  for  the  peasants  ho  dance  ho  at  the  Cafe  de  la  Paix 
at  Soulanges;  I  hear  their  talk.  Well,  then,  there  is  a  bad 
feeling  towards  you ;  they  will  make,  the  country  too  hot  to 
hold  you.  If  your  damned  Michaud  doesn't  turn  over  a  new 
leaf,  they  will  force  you  to  turn  him  away !  There,  now !  the 
advice  and  the  otter  are  cheap  at  twenty  francs " 

As  old  Fourchon  delivered  himself  of  these  final  remarks, 
a  man's  footsteps  sounded  outside,  and  the  object  of  his  men- 
aces suddenly  appeared  unannounced.  It  was  easy  to  see 
that  the  threat  had  reached  Michaud's  ears  from  the  look 
which  he  gave  the  orator  of  the  poor.  Old  Fourchon's  im- 
pudence forsook  him;  he  looked  like  a  thief  confronted  with 
the  policeman.  He  knew  that  he  had  made  a  mistake,  and 
that  Michaud  had,  as  it  were,  a  right  to  call  him  to  account, 
for  an  outpouring  evidently  meant  to  intimidate  the  dwellers 
at  the  Aigues. 

"Behold  the  minister  of  war,"  said  the  General,  addressing 
Blondet,  with  a  gesture  that  indicated  Michaud. 

"I  beg  your  pardon,  madame,  for  coming  into  the  room 
without  asking  your  leave,"  remarked  the  minister,  "but  I 
must  speak  to  the  General  on  urgent  business." 

While  Michaud  made  his  apologies  he  watched  Sibilet.  The 
joy  of  the  man's  heart  at  Fourchon's  bold  tone  expanded  over 
his  visage,  unnoticed  by  any  of  those  who  sat  at  the  table, 


THE  PEASANTRY  83 

who  were  interested  in  no  small  degree  by  the  otter  hunter. 
But  Michaud,  who,  for  reasons  of  his  own,  was  always  on  the 
watch  with  Sibilet,  was  struck  with  the  expression  of  the 
steward's  face. 

"He  has  certainly  earned  his  twenty  francs,  as  he  says, 
M.  le  Comte,"  cried  Sibilet ;  "the  otter  is  not  dear." 

"Give  him  twenty  francs,"  said  the  General,  addressing 
his  valet. 

"Are  you  really  taking  it  from  me  ?"  Blondet  asked  him. 

"I  will  have  the  animal  stuffed,"  cried  the  Count. 

"Oh !  your  lordship,  that  kind  gentleman  would  have  let 
me  have  the  skin  !"  protested  old  Fourchon. 

"Very  well,"  said  the  Countess.  "You  shall  have  five 
francs  for  the  skin,  but  you  can  go  now ' 

The  strong,  rank  odor  of  the  two  dwellers  on  the  highroad 
tainted  the  air  of  the  room,  and  so  offended  Mme.  de  Mont- 
cornet's  delicate  senses,  that  if  the  pair  had  stayed  there  much 
longer  the  lady  would  have  been  obliged  to  go.  It  was  solely 
to  this  inconvenient  quality  that  Fourchon  owed  his  twenty- 
five  francs.  He  went  out,  still  eying  Michaud  fearfully, 
and  making  him  obeisances  without  end. 

"What  I  have  been  telling  his  lordship,  Mosieur  Michaud," 
said  he,  "was  for  your  good." 

"Or  for  the  good  of  them  that  you  take  pay  of,"  said  Mi- 
chaud, looking  him  through  and  through. 

"Bring  coffee  and  leave  us,"  the  General  ordered;  "and 
before  all  things,  shut  the  doors." 

Blondet  had  not  yet  seen  the  head-forester  at  the  Aigues; 
his  first  impression  was  very  different  from  that  just  made 
upon  him  by  Sibilet.  Michaud  inspired  confidence  and  es- 
teem as  great  as  the  repulsion  excited  by  Sibilet. 

The  head-forester's  face  caught  your  attention  at  once  by 
its  shapely  outlines — the  oval  contours  were  as  delicately 
moulded  as  the  profile,  a  regularity  of  feature  seldom  found 
in  an  ordinary  Frenchman.  Yet,  in  spite  of  this  regularity 
of  feature,  the  face  was  not  lacking  in  character,  perhaps 
by  reason  of  its  harmonious  coloring,  in  which  red  and  tawny 


84  THE  PEASANTRY 

tints  prevailed,  indications  of  physical  courage.  The  clear, 
brown  eyes  were  bright  and  keen,  unfaltering  in  the  expres- 
sion of  thought,  and  looked  you  straight  in  the  face.  The 
broad,  open  brow  was  set  still  further  in  relief  by  thick,  black 
hair.  There  was  a  wrinkle  here  and  there,  traced  by  the  pro- 
fession of  arms,  on  the  fine  face  lit  up  by  loyalty,  decision, 
and  self-reliance.  If  any  doubt  or  suspicion  entered  his  mind, 
it  could  be  read  there  at  once.  His  figure,  still  slender  and 
shapely,  as  is  the  case  with  the  men  picked  out  for  a  crack 
regiment  of  cavalry,  was  such  that  the  head-forester  might 
be  described  as  a  strapping  fellow.  Michaud  kept  his  mous- 
taches, whiskers,  and  a  beard  beneath  the  chin ;  altogether,  he 
recalled  a  military  type  which  a  deluge  of  patriotic  prints  and 
pictures  has  made  almost  ridiculous.  The  defect  of  the  type 
is  its  over-abundance  in  the  French  army;  but  perhaps  this 
uniformity  of  physiognomy  has  its  origin  in  the  continuity  of 
emotions,  the  hardships  of  camp  life,  from  which  no  rank  is 
exempt,  and  the  fact  that  the  same  efforts  are  made  on  the 
field  of  battle  by  officers  and  men  alike. 

Michaud  was  dressed  in  dark  blue  from  head  to  foot;  he 
still  wore  the  black  satin  stock  and  soldiers'  boots,  just  as 
he  held  himself  somewhat  stiffly,  with  his  shoulders  set  back 
and  chest  expanded,  as  if  he  still  bore  arms.  The  red  ribbon 
of  the  Legion  of  Honor  adorned  his  buttonhole.  And  (to 
add  a  final  trait  of  character  to  a  sketch  of  the  mere  outside 
of  the  man)  while  the  steward,  since  he  had  come  into  office, 
had  never  omitted  the  formula  "Monsieur  le  Comte"  in  ad- 
dressing his  patron,  Michaud  had  never  called  his  master  by 
any  name  but  "the  General." 

Once  again  Blondet  exchanged  a  significant  glance  with 
the  Abbe  Brossette.  "What  a  contrast !"  he  seemed  to  say, 
as  he  looked  from  the  steward  to  the  head-forester.  Then, 
that  he  might  learn  whether  the  man's  character,  thoughts, 
and  words  were  such  as  his  face  and  stature  might  lead  you 
to  expect,  he  looked  full  at  Michaud,  saying: 

"I  say !  I  was  out  early  this  morning,  and  found  your  for- 
esters still  abed !" 


THE  PEASANTRY  85 

"At  what  time  ?"  asked  the  old  soldier  uneasily. 

"At  half-past  seven." 

Michaud  gave  his  General  an  almost  mischievous  glance. 

"And  through  which  gate  did  you  go  out  ?"  asked  Michaud. 

"The  Conches  gate.  The  keeper  in  his  shirt  took  a  look 
at  me  from  the  window/'  answered  Blondet. 

"Gaillard  had  just  gone  to  bed,  no  doubt,"  replied  Michaud. 
"When  you  told  me  that  you  had  gone  out  early,  1 
thought  that  you  were  up  before  sunrise,  and  if  my  forester 
had  gone  home  so  early,  he  must  have  been  ill;  but  at  half- 
past  seven  he  would  be  going  to  bed. — We  are  up  all  night," 
Michaud  added,  after  a  pause,  by  way  of  answer  to  a  look  of 
astonishment  from  the  Countess;  "but  this  vigilance  of  ours 
is  always  at  fault.  You  have  just  given  twenty-five  francs 
to  a  man  who  a  few  minutes  ago  was  quietly  helping  to  hide 
the  'traces  of  a  theft  committed  on  your  property  this  very 
morning.  In  fact,  as  soon  as  the  General  is  ready,  we  must 
talk  it  over,  for  something  must  be  done — 

"You  are  always  full  of  your  rights,  my  dear  Michaud,  and 
summum  jus,  summa  injuria.  If  you  do  not  concede  a  point, 
you  will  make  trouble  for  yourself,"  said  Sibilet.  "I  could 
have  liked  you  to  hear  old  Fourchon  talking  just  now  when 
wine  had  loosened  his  tongue  a  little." 

"He  frightened  me !"  exclaimed  the  Countess. 

"He  said  nothing  that  I  have  not  known  for  a  long  time," 
said  the  General. 

"Oh !  the  rascal  was  not  drunk,  he  played  a  part,  for  whose 
benefit? — Perhaps  you  know?"  Michaud  suggested,  looking 
steadily  at  Sibilet.  The  steward  reddened  under  his  gaze. 

"0  rus!"  cried  Blondet,  looking  out  of  the  corner  of  his  eye 
at  the  Abbe. 

"The  poor  people  suffer,"  said  the  Countess;  "there  was 
some  truth  in  what  old  Fourchon  has  just  shrieked  at  us,  for 
it  cannot  be  said  that  he  spoke." 

"Madame,"  answered  Michaud,  "do  you  think  that  the  Em- 
peror's soldiers  lay  in  roses  for  fourteen  years?  The  General 
is  a  count,  he  is  a  Grand  Officer  of  the  Legion  of  Honor,  he 


86  THE  PEASANTRY 

has  had  grants  of  land  made  him;  do  I  show  any  jealousy 
of  him,  I  that  have  fought  as  he  has?  Have  I  any  wish  tc 
cavil  at  his  fame,  to  steal  his  land,  or  to  refuse  him  the  honor 
due  to  his  rank? — The  peasant  ought  to  obey  as  the  soldier 
obeys ;  he  should  have  a  soldier's  loyalty,  his  respect  for  privi- 
leges won  by  other  men,  and  try  to  rise  to  be  an  officer,  by 
fair  means,  by  his  own  exertions,  and  not  by  knavery  The 
sword  and  the  ploughshare  are  twin  brothers.  And  in  the 
soldier's  lot  there  is  one  thing  that  the  peasant  has  not :  death 
hovering  overhead  at  every  hour." 

"That  is  what  I  should  like  to  tell  them  from  the  pulpit," 
cried  the  Abbe  Brossette. 

"Concessions?"  the  head-forester  went  on,  in  answer  to 
Sibilet's  challenge.  "I  would  concede  quite  ten  per  cent 
on  the  gross  returns  from  the  Aigues,  but  the  way  things  go 
now,  the  General  loses  thirty  per  cent;  and  if  M.  Sibilet  is 
paid  so  much  per  cent  on  the  receipts,  I  do  not  understand 
his  concessions,  for  he  pretty  benevolently  submits  to  a  loss 
of  ten  or  twelve  hundred  francs  a  year." 

"My  dear  M.  Michaud,"  retorted  Sibilet  in  a  surly  tone, 
"I  have  told  M.  le  Comte  that  I  would  rather  lose  twelve  hun- 
dred francs  than  my  life.  Think  it  seriously  over ;  I  keep  on 
telling  you ' 

"Life!"  cried  the  Countess;  "can  it  be  a  question  of  any 
one's  life?" 

"We  ought  not  to  discuss  affairs  of  the  State  here,"  said  the 
General,  laughing. — "All  this  means,  madame,  that  Sibilet, 
in  his  quality  of  finance  minister,  is  timid  and  cowardly,  while 
my  minister  of  war  is  brave,  and,  like  his  General,  fears 
nothing." 

"Say  prudent,  M.  le  Comte  ?"  cried  Sibilet. 

"Come,  now,  are  we  really  surrounded  by  snares  set  for  us 
by  savages  like  the  heroes  of  Fenimore  Cooper's  novels  in  the 
backwoods  of  America  ?" 

"Come !  your  statesmanship,  gentlemen,  consists  in  under- 
standing how  to  govern  without  alarming  us  by  the  creaking 
of- the  machinery  of  Government,"  said  Mme.  de  Montcornet. 


THE  PEASANTRY  87 

"Ah!  Mme.  la  Comtesse,  perhaps  it  is  a  needful  thing 
that  you  should  know  what  one  of  your  pretty  caps  costs  in 
sweat  here,"  said  the  cure. 

"No,  for  then  I  might  very  well  do  without  them,  look  re- 
spectfully at  a  five-franc  piece,  and  grow  a  miser,  as  all  coun- 
try people  do,  and  I  should  lose  too  much  by  it,"  said  the 
Countess,  laughing. — "Here,  my  dear  Abbe,  give  me  your 
arm;  let  us  leave  the  General  with  his  two  ministers,  and  go 
to  the  Avonne  gate  to  see  Mme.  Michaud.  I  have  not  made 
a  call  upon  her  since  I  came;  it  is  time  to  look  after  my  little 
protegee." 

And  the  pretty  woman  went  for  thick  shoes  and  a  hat; 
Sibilet's  fears,  Mouche  and  Fourchon,  their  rags,  and  the  hate 
in  their  eyes,  were  already  forgotten. 

The  Abbe  Brossette  and  Blondet,  obedient  to  the  mistress 
of  the  house,  followed  her  out  of  the  room,  and  waited  for  her 
on  the  terrace  in  front  of  the  chateau. 

"What  do  you  think  of  all  this?"  Blondet  asked  his  com- 
panion. 

"I  am  a  pariah.  I  am  watched  by  spies  as  the  common 
enemy.  Every  moment  I  am  obliged  to  keep  the  ears  and 
eyes  of  prudence  wide  open,  or  I  should  fall  into  some  of  the 
snares  they  set  so  as  to  rid  themselves  of  me,"  said  the  officiat- 
ing priest.  "Between  ourselves,  it  has  come  to  this,  I  ask 
myself  whether  they  will  not  shoot  me  down " 

"And  you  stay  on  ?"  asked  Blondet. 

"A  man  no  more  deserts  the  cause  of  God  than  the  cause 
of  the  Emperor!"  the  priest  answered  with  a  simplicity 
which  impressed  Blondet.  He  grasped  the  priest's  hand  cor- 
dially. 

"So  you  must  see,"  the  Abbe  continued,  "that  I  am  not  in 
a  position  to  know  anything  of  all  that  is  brewing.  Still  it 
seems  to  me  that  the  people  here  have  'a  spite  against'  the 
General,  as  they  say  in  Artois  and  Belgium." 

Something  must  here  be  said  about  the  cure  of  Blangy. 

The  Abbe",  the  fourth  son  of  a  good  middle-class  family 
in  Autun,  was  a  clever  man,  carrying  his  head  high  on  the 


88  THE  PEASANTRY 

score  of  his  cloth.  Short  and  thin  though  he  was,  he  re- 
deemed the  insignificance  of  his  appearance  by  that  air  of 
hard-headedness  which  sits  not  ill  on  a  Burgundian.  He  had 
accepted  a  subordinate  position  through  devotion,  for  his  re- 
ligiouj  conviction  had  been  backed  by  political  conviction. 
There  was  something  in  him  of  the  priest  of  other  times ;  he 
had  a  passionate  belief  in  the  Church  and  his  order ;  he  looked 
at  things  as  a  whole,  his  ambition  was  untainted  by  selfishness. 
Serve  was  his  motto,  to  serve  the  Church  and  the  Monarchy 
at  the  point  where  danger  threatens  most,  to  serve  in  the 
ranks,  like  the  soldier  who  feels  within  himself  that  his  desire 
to  acquit  himself  well  and  his  courage  must  bring  him  sooner 
or  later  a  General's  command.  He  faltered  in  none  of  his 
vows  of  poverty,  chastity,  and  obedience,  acquitting  himself 
in  these  respects,  as  in  all  the  other  duties  of  his  position, 
with  a  simplicity  and  cheerfulness  that  is  the  unmistakable 
sign  of  an  upright  nature,  in  which  natural  instincts  make  for 
right  as  well  as  strong  and'earnest  religious  conviction. 

This  remarkable  churchman  saw  at  the  first  glance  that 
Blondet  was  attracted  to  the  Countess,  saw  also  that  with  a 
daughter  of  the  house  of  Troisville,  and  a  man  of  letters,  who 
supported  the  Monarchy,  it  behooved  him  to  show  himself  a 
man  of  the  world,  for  the  dignity  of  the  cloth.  He  came 
to  make  a  fourth  at  whist  almost  every  evening.  Emile  Blon- 
det was  able  to  appreciate  the  Abbe  Brossette,  and  paid  him 
marked  deference,  so  that  the  two  men  felt  attracted  to  each 
other ;  for  every  clever  man  is  delighted  to  meet  with  an  equal, 
or,  if  you  prefer  it,  an  audience,  and  there  is  a  natural  affinity 
between  sword  and  scabbard. 

"But  now,  M.  1'Abbe,  you  whose  earnestness  has  placed 
you  below  your  propel  level,  what,  in  your  opinion,  has 
brought  about  this  state  of  things  ?" 

"I  do  not  like  to  give  you  platitudes  after  that  flattering 
parenthesis,"  said  the  Abbe,  smiling.  "The  things  that  are 
happening  in  this  valley  are  happening  everywhere  in  France. 
It  is  all  the  outcome  of  the  hopes  and  tendencies  of  1789; 
they  have  filtered  clown,  sc  to  speak,  into  the  peasants'  minds. 
The  Revolution  affected  some  districts  much  more  deeply  than 


THE  PEASANTRY  89 

others ;  and  in  this  strip  of  Burgundy  lying  so  near  to  Paris, 
the  significance  of  that  movement  was  felt  to  be  the  triumph 
of  the  Gaul  over  the  Frank.  Historically,  the  peasants  are 
still  on  the  morrow  of  the  Jacquerie;  their  defeat  sank 
deeply  into  their  minds.  The  facts  have  been  long  for- 
gotten, but  the  idea  has  become  instinctive  in  them.  It  is  as 
much  in  the  blood  of  the  peasant  as  pride  of  birth  was  once 
in  the  blood  of  the  noble.  So  the  Devolution  of  1789  was 
the  revenge  of  the  vanquished.  The  peasants  have  entered 
upon  the  ownership  of  the  soil,  a  possession  forbidden  to  them 
by  feudal  law  for  twelve  hundred  years.  Hence  their  love 
of  the  land ;  they  divide  it  up  among  them  till  a  single  furrow 
is  cut  in  half.  It  not  seldom  happens  that  they  pay  no  taxes, 
for  the  property  is  so  exceedingly  small  that  it  will  not  cover 
the  costs  of  prosecution  for  arrears." 

"Their  wrongheadedness,  their  suspiciousness,  if  you  will," 
Blondet  broke  in  upon  the  Abbe,  "in  this  respect  is  so  great 
that  in  a  thousand  cantons  out  of  three  thousand  in  France, 
it  is  impossible  for  a  rich  man  to  buy  land  of  a  peasant.  They 
will  let  or  sell  their  bits  of  ground  among  themselves,  but 
they  will  not  give  it  up  to  a  well-to-do  farmer  on  any  consider- 
ation whatever.  The  more  the  great  landowner  offers,  the  more 
their  vague  suspicions  increase.  Expropriation  is  the  only 
means  by  which  the  peasant's  holdings  can  be  bought  under 
the  common  law  of  the  land.  Plenty  of  people  have  noticed 
this  fact,  but  they  see  no  reason  for  it." 

"This  is  the  reason,"  said  the  Abbe  Brossette,  rightly  con- 
sidering that  with  Blondet  a  pause  was  a  sort  of  interrogation. 
"Twelve  centuries  are  as  nothing  to  a  caste  which  has  never 
been  diverted  from  its  principal  idea  by  the  historical  specta- 
cle of  civilization,  a  caste  which  still  proudly  wears  the  noble's 
broad-brimmed  silk-bound  hat  since  the  day  when  it  fell  out 
of  fashion  and  was  abandoned  to  the  peasants.  The  enthu- 
siasm in  the  depths  of  the  hearts  of  the  people,  which  cen- 
tered itself  passionately  on  the  figure  of  Napoleon  (who  never 
understood  the  secret  of  it  as  thoroughly  as  he  imagined), 
sprang  solely  from  this  idea,  which  may  perhaps  explain  the 
portent  of  his  return  in  1815 — Napoleon,  bound  to  the  people 


90  THE  PEASANTRY 

by  a  million  of  common  soldiers  (first  and  last),  is  even  yet, 
in  their  eyes,  the  king  of  the  people,  sprung  from  the  loins 
of  the  Ee  solution,  the  man  who  confirmed  them  in  the  pos- 
session of  the  National  lands.  The  oil  at  his  coronation 
was  saturated  with  this  idea " 

"An  idea  which  the  year  1814  disturbed  with  unfortunate 
results,  an  idea  which  the  Monarchy  should  regard  as  sacred," 
Blondet  said  quickly;  "for  the  people  may  find  beside  the 
throne  a  prince  to  whom  his  father  left  the  head  of  Louis 
XVI.  as  part  of  his  inheritance." 

"Hush,  here  comes  the  Countess,"  said  the  Abbe  Brossette. 
"Fourchon  frightened  her,  and  we  must  keep  her  here  in  the 
interests  of  religion,  of  the  throne,  nay,  of  the  country  itself." 

Michaud,  as  head-forester,  had  doubtless  come  to  report  the 
injury  done  to  Vatel's  eyes.  But  before  reporting  the  delib- 
erations of  the  Council  of  State,  the  reader  must  be  put  in 
possession  of  a  sequence  of  facts,  a  concise  account  of  the  cir- 
cumstances under  which  the  General  bought  the  Aigues,  and 
of  the  weighty  reasons  which  determined  Sibilet's  appoint- 
ment to  the  stewardship  of  the  fine  estate,  together  with  an 
explanation  of  Michaud's  installation  as  head-forester;  in 
short,  of  all  the  antecedent  facts  that  have  brought  people's 
minds  into  their  present  attitude,  and  given  rise  to  the  fears 
expressed  by  Sibilet. 

There  will  be  a  further  advantage  in  this  rapid  sketch,  in 
that  it  will  introduce  several  of  the  principal  actors  of  the 
drama,  give  an  outline  of  their  interests,  and  set  forth  the 
dangers  of  the  Comte  de  Montcornet's  position. 


VI 

A  TALE  OF  ROBBERS 

IN  1791,  or  thereabouts,  Mile.  Laguerre  came  on  a  visit  to 
her  country  house,  and  accepted  as  her  new  agent  the  son  of 
an  ex-steward  of  the  neighboring  manor  of  Soulanges. 


THE  PEASANTRY  91 

The  little  town  of  Soulanges  at  this  day  is  simply  the 
market-town  of  the  district,  though  it  was  once  the  capital  of 
a  considerable  county  in  the  days  when  the  House  of  Bur- 
gundy waged  war  against  the  House  of  France.  Ville-aux- 
Fayes,  now  the  seat  of  the  sub-prefecture,  was  a  mere  petty 
fief  in  those  days,  a  dependency  of  Soulanges  like  the  Aigues, 
Eonquerolles,  Cerneux,  Conches,  and  fifteen  hamlets  besides; 
but  the  Soulanges  still  bear  a  count's  coronet,  while  the  Ron- 
querolles  of  to-day  styles  himself  "Marquis,"  thanks  to  the 
intrigues  of  a  court  which  raised  the  son  of  a  Captain  du 
Plessis  to  a  dukedom  over  the  heads  of  the  first  families  of 
the  Conquest.  Which  shows  that  towns,  like  families,  have 
their  vicissitudes. 

The  ex-steward's  son,  a  penniless  bachelor,  succeeded  an 
agent  enriched  by  the  spoils  of  thirty  years  of  office.  The 
agent  had  decided  that  a  third  share  in  the  firm  of  Minoret 
would  suit  him  better  than  the  stewardship  of  the  Aigues. 
The  future  victualler  had  recommended  as  his  successor  a 
young  man  who  had  been  his  responsible  assistant  for  five 
years.  Frangois  Gaubertin  should  cover  his  retreat,  and,  in- 
deed, his  pupil  undertook  (out  of  gratitude  for  his  training) 
to  obtain  the  late  agent's  discharge  from  Mile.  Laguerre,  when 
he  saw  how  the  lady  went  in  terror  of  the  Eevolution. 

Gaubertin  senior,  ex-steward  of  the  manor  of  Soulanges, 
and  public  accuser  of  the  department,  took  the  timorous 
operatic  singer  under  his  protection.  She  was  "suspect"  on 
the  face  of  it,  after  her  relations  with  the  aristocracy ;  so  the 
local  Fouquier-Tinville  got  up  a  little  comedy,  an  explosion  of 
feeling  against  the  stage-queen,  in  order  to  give  his  son  a 
chance  to  play  the  part  of  deliverer.  By  these  means,  the 
young  man  obtained  his  predecessor's  discharge,  and  cito- 
yenne  Laguerre  made  Frangois  Gaubertin  her  prime  minister, 
partly  out  of  gratitude,  partly  from  policy. 

The  future  victualler  of  the  armies  of  the  Republic  had 
not  spoiled  Mademoiselle.  He  annually  remitted  about  thirty 
thousand  livres  to  her  in  Paris,  whereas  the  Aigues  must  have 
brought  in  forty  thousand  at  the  very  least.  When,  therefore, 

VOL.    10 — 32 


92  THE  PEASANTRY 

Frangois  Gaubertin  promised  her  thirty-six  thousand  francs, 
the  ignorant  opera-girl  was  amazed. 

If  the  fortune  subsequently  amassed  by  Francois  Gaubertin 
is  to  be  justified  before  the  tribunal  of  probability,  its  history 
must  be  traced  from  the  beginning.  First  of  all,  young  Gau- 
bertin obtained  the  post  of  mayor  of  Blangy  through  his 
father's  influence ;  and  thenceforward,  in  spite  of  the  law,  he 
demanded  that  all  payments  should  be  made  to  him  in  coin. 
It  was  in  his  power  to  strike  any  one  down  by  the  ruinous 
requisitions  of  the  Eepublic,  and  he  used  his  power  to  "ter- 
rorize" his  debtors  (to  use  the  language  of  the  time).  Then 
the  steward  punctually  remitted  his  mistress'  dues  in  as- 
signats, so  long  as  assignats  were  legal  tender.  If  the  finances 
of  the  country  were  the  worse  for  the  paper  currency,  at  any 
rate  it  laid  the  foundation  of  many  a  private  fortune. 

In  three  years,  between  1792  and  1795,  young  Gaubertin 
made  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  francs  out  of  the  Aigues, 
and  speculated  on  the  Paris  money  market.  Mile.  Laguerre, 
embarrassed  with  her  assignats,  was  obliged  to  coin  money 
with  her  diamonds,  hitherto  useless.  She  sent  them  to  Gau- 
bertin,  who  sold  them  for  her,  and  punctually  remitted  the 
money  in  coin.  Mile.  Laguerre  was  so  much  touched  by  this 
piece  of  loyalty,  that  from  that  time  forth  her  belief  in  Gau- 
bertin was  as  firm  as  her  belief  in  Piccini. 

In  1796,  at  the  time  of  his  marriage  with  cityonne  Isaure 
Mouchon  (a  daughter  of  one  of  his  father's  old  friends  of 
the  Convention),  young  Gaubertin  possessed  three  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  francs  in  coin;  and  as  the  Directory 
seemed  to  him  to  be  likely  to  last,  he  determined  that  Mile. 
Laguerre  should  pass  the  accounts  of  his  five  years'  steward- 
ship before  he  married,  finding  an  excuse  in  that  event  in  his 
life  for  the  request. 

"I  shall  be  the  father  of  a  family,"  he  said ;  "you  know  the 
sort  of  character  an  agent  gets ;  my  father-in-law  is  a  Repub- 
lican of  Roman  probity,  and  a  man  of  influence  moreover; 
I  should  like  to  show  him  that  I  am  not  unworthy  of  him." 


THE  PEASANTRY  93 

Mile.  Laguerre  expressed  her  satisfaction  with  Gaubertin's 
accounts  in  the  most  flattering  terms. 

At  first  the  steward  tried  to  check  the  peasants'  depreda- 
tions, partly  to  inspire  confidence  in  Mile.  Laguerre,  partly 
because  he  feared  (and  not  without  reason)  that  the  returns 
would  suffer,  and  that  there  would  be  a  serious  falling  of! 
in  the  timber  merchant's  tips.  But  by  that  time  the  sovereign 
people  had  learned  to  make  pretty  free  everywhere;  and  the 
lady  of  the  manor,  beholding  her  kings  at  such  close  quarters, 
felt  somewhat  overawed  by  majesty,  and  signified  to  her  Eich- 
elieu  that,  before  all  things,  she  most  particularly  desired  to 
die  in  peace.  The  prima  donna's  income  was  so  far  too  large 
for  her  needs,  that  she  suffered  the  most  disastrous  precedents. 
For  instance,  rather  than  take  law  proceedings,  she  allowed 
her  neighbors  to  enqroach  upon  her  proprietor's  rights.  She 
never  looked  beyond  the  high  walls  of  her  park;  she  knew 
that  nothing  would  pass  them  to  trouble  her  felicity;  she 
wished  for  nothing  but  a  quiet  life,  like  the  true  philosopher 
that  she  was.  What  were  a  few  thousand  livres  of  income, 
more  or  less,  or  rebates  on  sales  of  wood  demanded  by  the 
merchants,  on  the  ground  that  the  peasants  had  spoiled  the 
trees,  in  the  eyes  of  a  thriftless,  reckless  opera-girl,  whose 
income  of  a  hundred  thousand  francs  had  cost  her  nothing 
but  pleasure,  who  had  just  submitted  without  a  murmur 
to  lose  forty  out  of  sixty  thousand  francs  a  year? 

"Eh !"  cried  she,  with  the  easy  good-nature  of  an  impure 
of  the  bygone  eighteenth  century,  "every  one  must  live,  even 
the  Republic !" 

Mile.  Cochet,  terrible  power,  her  woman  and  female  vizier, 
had  tried  to  open  her  mistress'  eyes  when  she  saw  what  an 
ascendency  Gaubertin  had  gained  over  "my  lady,"  as  he 
called  her  from  the  first,  in  spite  of  revolutionary  laws  of 
equality;  but  Gaubertin  (in  his  turn)  opened  the  waiting- 
maid's  eyes  by  producing  a  document  purporting  to  be  a 
"denunciation"  sent  to  his  father,  the  public  accuser,  wherein 


94  THE  PEASANTRY 

Mile.  Cochet  was  vehemently  accused  of  being  in  correspond- 
ence with  Pitt  and  Cobourg. 

Thenceforward  the  two  powers  ruled  with  divided  sway, 
but  a  la  Montgomery — under  the  rose.  La  Cochet  praised 
Gaubertin  to  Mile.  Laguerre,  just  as  Gaubertin  extolled  La 
Cochet  to  his  mistress.  Moreover,  the  woman  knew  that  her 
nest  was  feathered,  and  that  she  could  sleep  securely  on  her 
mistress'  legacy  of  sixty  thousand  francs.  Madame  was  so 
used  to  La  Cochet  that  she  could  not  do  without  her.  The 
maid  knew  all  about  the  secrets  of  "dear  mistress' "  toilet ; 
she  had  the  knack  of  sending  "dear  mistress"  to  sleep  of  an 
evening  with  endless  stories,  and  could  waken  her  in  the 
morning  with  flattering  words.  In  fact,  La  Cochet  never  saw 
any  change  in  "dear  mistress"  till  the  day  of  her  death,  and 
when  "dear  mistress"  lay  in  her  coffin,  probably  thought  that 
she  looked  better  than  ever. 

The  annual  gains  made  by  this  pair,  together  with  their 
salaries  and  perquisites,  grew  to  be  so  considerable,  that  the 
most  affectionate  relatives  could  not  have  been  more  attached 
than  they  to  the  excellent  creature  their  mistress.  Does  any 
one  yet  know  how  well  a  knave  can  lull  his  dupe  ?  No  mother 
is  so  tender  or  so  thoughtful  for  an  idolized  daughter  as  a 
practitioner  of  tartufferie  for  his  milch  cow.  What  limits  are 
there  to  the  success  of  Tartuffe  played  on  many  a  private 
stage?  What  is  friendship  in  comparison?  Moliere  died  all 
too  soon,  he  should  have  shown  us  the  sequel — Orgon's  de- 
spair, Orgon  bored  by  his  family  and  worried  by  his  children, 
Orgon  regretting  Tartuffe  and  his  flatteries,  muttering  to 
himself,  "Those  were  good  times !" 

During  the  last  eight  years  of  Mile.  Laguerre's  life  she  only 
received  thirty  out  of  the  fifty  thousand  francs  brought  in  by 
the  Aigues.  Gaubertin's  reign  ended  in  much  the  same  way 
as  the  reign  of  his  predecessor,  though  rents  were  higher  and 
prices  had  risen  notably  between  1791  and  1815,  and  Mile. 
Laguerre's  estate  increased  by  continued  purchases.  But  it 
was  part  of  Gaubertin's  plan  to  inherit  the  estate  on  his  mis- 
tress' approaching  death,  and  therefore  he  was  obliged  to  in- 


THE  PEASANTRY  95 

vent  and  maintain  a  chronic  state  of  bad  times.  La  Cochet, 
initiated  into  this  scheme,  was  to  share  in  the  benefits. 

Now  the  stage  queen  in  exile  possessed  a  supplementary 
income  of  twenty  thousand  livres  from  investments  in  con- 
solidated government  stock  (note  how  admirably  the  lan- 
guage of  politicians  adapts  itself  to  the  humors  of  politics), 
and  scarcely  spent  the  aforesaid  twenty  thousand  francs  in  a 
year,  but  she  was  amazed  at  the  continual  purchases  of  land 
made  by  the  steward  out  of  the  surplus  funds  at  his  disposal. 
Never  in  her  life  before  had  she  lived  within  her  income ;  and 
now  that  her  needs  had  shrunk  with  age,  she  mistook  the 
symptoms,  and  credited  Gaubertih  and  La  Cochet  with  hon- 
esty. 

"Two  treasures!"  she  assured  every  one  who  came  to  see 
her. 

Gaubertin,  moreover,  was  careful  of  appearances;  his  ac- 
counts looked  straightforward.  All  the  rents  were  duly  posted 
in  the  ledger;  anything  that  could  not  fail  to  strike  the  ac- 
tress' slender  intelligence  was  definite,  accurate,  and  precise, 
so  far  as  figures  went.  But  the  steward'  took  a  percentage 
on  all  outgoing  expenses,  bargains  about  to  be  concluded,  ex- 
ploitations, contracts  for  repairs,  and  lawsuits  which  he  de- 
vised. His  mistress  never  looked  into  these  details,  and  so  it 
not  seldom  happened  that  an  arrangement  was  made  by  which 
the  buyers  paid  double  the  prices  entered,  and  were  bound 
over  to  silence  by  receiving  a  share  of  the  spoils.  This  easi- 
ness on  Gaubertin's  part  won  general  popularity  for  himself, 
and  every  one  praised  his  mistress;  for  besides  being  fleeced 
all  round,  she  gave  away  a  great  deal  of  money. 

"God  preserve  her,  dear  lady !"  was  the  cry. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  Mile.  Laguerre  gave  directly  or  indi- 
rectly to  every  one  that  asked  of  her.  As  a  sort  of  Nemesis  of 
youth,  the"  opera  singer  was  plundered  in  her  age,  so  deftly 
and  so  systematically  that  her  pillagers  kept  within  certain 
bounds.  Jest  her  eyes  should  be  opened  to  all  that  went  on, 
and  she  should  be  frightened  into  selling  the  Aigues  and  going 
back  to  Paris. 


96  THE  PEASANTRY 

It  was  (alas!)  in  the  interest  of  such  plunderers  as  these 
that  Paul-Louis  Courier  was  murdered.  He  had  made  the 
blunder  of  announcing  beforehand  that  he  meant  to  take  Ms 
wife  away  and  sell  his  estate,  on  which  many  a  Tourangeau 
Tonsard  was  living.  With  this  fear  before  their  eyes,  the 
marauders  at  the  Aigues  only  cut  down  young  tree?  when 
driven  to  extremities,  when,  for  instance,  there  were  no 
branches  left  which  they  could  reach  with  a  bill-hook  tied  to 
a  pole.  For  the  sake  of  their  own  ill-gotten  gains,  they  did 
not  go  out  of  their  way  to  do  damage;  and  yet,  during  the 
last  years  of  Mile.  Laguerre's  life,  the  abuse  of  wood-cutting 
reached  most  scandalous  proportions.  On  certain  moonlit 
nights  no  less  than  two  hundred  faggots  would  be  bound  in 
the  woods;  and  as  for  gleaning  in  fields  and  vineyards,  the 
Aigues  lost  (as  Sibilet  had  just  pointed  out)  about  one-fourth 
of  its  produce  in  such  ways. 

Mile.  Laguerre  forbade  La  Cochet  to  marry  during  her 
own  lifetime,  a  piece  of  selfishness  where  dependants  are  con- 
cerned that  may  be  remarked  all  the  world  over,  and  in  its 
absurdity  about  on  a  par  with  the  mania  of  those  who  clutch 
till  their  latest  sigh  at  possessions  which  have  long  ceased 
to  contribute  to  their  enjoyment,  at  imminent  risk  of  being 
poisoned  by  their  impatient  next-of-kin.  So  three  weeks  after 
Mile.  Laguerre  was  laid  in  the  earth,  Mile.  Cochet  married  a 
police  sergeant  at  Soulanges,  Soudry  by  name,  a  fine-looking 
man  of  forty-two,  who  had  come  to  the  Aigues  almost  every 
day  to  see  her  since  the  creation  of  the  police  force  in  1800, 
and  dined  at  least  four  days  a  week  with  Gaubertin  and  La 
Cochet. 

All  through  Madame's  life  she  had  had  her  meals  served 
apart  and  alone  when  she  had  no  visitors.  In  spite  of  the 
familiar  terms  on  which  she  lived  with  La  Cochet  and  Gau- 
bertin, neither  of  them  was  permitted  to  sit  at  table  with  the 
first  pupil  of  the  Academic  royale  de  musique  et  de  danse, 
and  to  the  very  end  she  preserved  her  etiquette,  her  manner 
of  dress,  her  rouge,  her  high-heeled  pantofles,  her  carriage  and 
servants,  and  divinity  of  the  goddess.  A  goddess  on  the 


THE  PEASANTRY  91 

stage,  a  goddess  of  the  town,  though  buried  away  in  the 
country  she  was  a  goddess  still ;  her  memory  is  held  in  vener- 
ation there,  dividing  the  honors  very  evenly  with  the  court 
of  Louis  XVI.  in  the  estimation  of  the  "best  society"  of 
Soulanges. 

The  aforesaid  Soudry,  who  paid  court  to  La  Cochet  from 
the  very  first,  was  the  owner  of  the  nicest  house  in  Soulanges 
and  about  six  thousand  francs,  with  a  prospect  of  a  retiring 
pension  of  four  hundred  francs.  La  Cochet,  now  Mme. 
Soudry,  was  a  person  of  no  little  consequence  in  Soulanges. 
The  retired  lady's-maid  was  generally  supposed  to  possess 
one  of  the  largest  fortunes  in  the  little  town  of  some  twelve 
hundred  inhabitants;  but  she  never  said  a  word  about  her 
savings,  which  were  placed,  together  with  Gaubertin's  capital, 
in  the  hands  of  a  wine  merchant's  commission  agent  in  Paris, 
one  Leclercq,  who  belonged  to  that  part  of  the  country,  Gau- 
bertin  being  his  sleeping  partner. 

Great  was  the  general  astonishment  when  M.  and  Mme. 
Soudry,  by  their  marriage-contract,  legitimized  a  natural 
son  of  the  bridegroom ;  to  this  boy,  therefore,  Mme.  Soudry's 
fortune  would  in  due  course  descend.  On  the  day  when  he 
officially  received  a  mother,  he  had  just  finished  his  law 
studies,  and  proposed  to  keep  his  terms  so  as  to  become  a  mag- 
istrate. 

It  is  almost  superfluous  to  add  that  there  was  a  firm  friend- 
ship between  the  Gaubertins  and  the  Soudrys,  a  friendship 
which  had  its  source  in  a  mutual  intelligence  of  twenty  years' 
standing.  Both  sides  were  in  duty  bound  till  the  end  of  their 
days  to  give  each  other  out  urbi  et  orbi  for  the  salt  of  the 
earth.  This  interest,  based  on  a  knowledge  on  either  side 
of  secret  stains  on  the  white  garment  of  conscience,  is  one  of 
the  most  indissoluble  of  all  bonds.  You  who  read  this  social 
drama  are  so  sure  of  this,  that  given  the  phenomenon  of  a 
lasting  devotion  which  puts  your  egoism  to  the  blush,  you 
will  say  of  the  pair  "that  those  two  must  have  committed 
some  crime  together." 


98  THE  PEASANTRY 

After  twenty-five  years'  of  stewardship,  the  steward  found 
that  he  could  command  six  hundred  thousand  francs  in  coin, 
and  La  Cochet  possessed  about  two  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 
sand. Dexterous  and  continual  changes  of  investment  did 
not  a  little  to  swell  the  capital  deposited  with  the  firm  of 
Leclercq  &  Company  on  the  Quai  de  Bethune  in  the  He  Saint- 
Louis  (rivals  of  the  famous  house  of  Grandet),  and  helped  to 
build  up  fortunes  for  the  commission  agent  and  Gau- 
bertin.  After  Mile.  Laguerre's  death,  Leclercq,  the  head 
of  the  firm  on  the  Quai  de  Bethune,  asked  for  the 
steward's  eldest  daughter,  Jenny,  in  marriage,  and  then  it 
was  that  Gaubertin  flattered  himself  that  he  saw  how  to  make 
himself  master  of  the  Aigues.  Twelve  years  previously  a 
notary  had  set  up  at  Soulanges  through  Gaubertin's  influ- 
ence, and  in  Maitre  Lupin's  office  the  plot  was  hatched. 

Lupin,  a  son  of  the  Comte  de  Soulanges'  late  agent,  had 
lent  himself  to  all  the  various  manoeuvres,  unhappily  too  com- 
mon in  out-of-the-way  country  places,  by  which  important 
pieces  of  property  change  hands  in  a  hole-and-corner  sort 
of  way  (to  use  a  popular  expression) — such  methods,  for  ex- 
ample, as  under-valuations  of  real  estate,  or  putting  up  prop- 
erty for  sale  and  fixing  the  reserve  bid  at  one-half  the  actual 
value,  or  distributing  unauthorized  placards.  Lately,  so  it  is 
said,  he  has  formed  a  society  in  Paris  for  blackmailing 
weavers  of  such  schemes  with  threats  of  running  prices  up 
against  them;  but  in  1816  the  scorching  glare  of  publicity, 
in  which  we  live  to-day,  had  not  yet  been  turned  on  France, 
so  those  in  the  plot  might  fairly  reckon  upon  dividing  the 
Aigues  among  them.  It  was  a  job  arranged  by  La  Cochet, 
the  notary,  and  Gaubertin;  the  latter  reserving  in  petto  his 
own  further  scheme  of  buying  out  his  confederates  so  soon 
as  the  land  should  be  purchased  in  his  name.  Lupin  chose 
the  attorney,  whom  he  instructed  to  make  application  to 
the  court  for  leave  to  sell.  This  man  had  agreed  to  make 
over  his  practice  to  Gaubertin's  son,  and  was  waiting  to  re- 
ceive payment,  so  that  he  had  an  interest  in  the  spoliation,  if 
indeed  those  eleven  labnrors  in  Picardy,  who  came  in  for  such 
an  unexpected  windfall,  could  regard  themselves  as  despoiled 


THE.  PEASANTRY  99 

But  on  the  eve  of  the  auction,  at  the  moment  when  all  con- 
cerned thought  themselves  secure  of  doubling  their  fortunes 
at  a  stroke,  there  came  down  a  solicitor  from  Paris,  who 
went  to  a  solicitor  at  Ville-aux-Fayes  (an  old  clerk  of  his, 
as  it  turned  out),  and  the  former  empowered  the  latter  to 
buy  the  Aigues,  which  he  accordingly  did,  for  eleven  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  francs.  Gaubertin  was  convinced  that 
Soudry  was  at  the  bottom  of  this,  and  Lupin  and  Soudry  were 
equally  sure  that  Gaubertin  had  outwitted  them  both;  but 
when  the  purchaser's  name  was  declared,  a  reconciliation 
took  place. 

The  country  solicitor  had  his  own  suspicions  of  the  plans 
formed  by  Gaubertin,  Lupin,  and  Soudry,  but  he  was  very 
careful  not  to  enlighten  his  sometime  employer,  and  for  the 
following  excellent  reason :  Unless  the  newcomer  kept  his  own 
counsel,  the  ministerial  official  would  have  the  country  made 
too  hot  to  hold  him.  The  wisdom  6f  his  taciturnity  was, 
moreover,  amply  justified  by  the  subsequent  course  of  events 
to  be  related  in  this  Etude.  If  the  provincial  is  crafty,  it  is 
in  self-defence ;  his  excuse  lies  in  the  danger  of  a  position  ad- 
mirably depicted  by  the  popular  adage,  "One  must  howl  with 
the  wolves,"  a  doctrine  which  finds  its  concrete  expression  in 
the  character  of  Philinte. 

So  when  General  de  Montcornet  took  possession  of  the 
Aigues,  Gaubertin  was  not  rich  enough  to  resign  his  post.  If 
his  eldest  daughter  was  to  marry  the  rich  banker  of  the  En- 
trepot, her  portion  of  two  hundred  thousand  francs  must  be 
forthcoming;  then  there  was  his  son's  practice,  which  would 
cost  thirty  thousand  francs ;  and  out  of  the  three  hundred  and 
seventy  thousand  which  still  remained  to  him,  he  must  sooner 
or  later  find  a  dowry  for  his  youngest  girl  Elisa,  who,  he 
hoped,  would  make  a  match  as  brilliant  as  that  of  her  older 
sister.  The  steward  determined  to  study  Montcornet's  char- 
acter, possibly  he  might  contrive  to  disgust  the  General  with 
the  place,  and  to  reap  the  benefit  of  his  abortive  schemes. 

With  the  peculiar  shrewdness  of  those  who  have  made  their 


100  THE  PEASANTRY 

way  by  cunning,  Gaubertin  put  faith  in  a  not  ill-grounded 
belief  in  a  general  resemblance  between  the  character  of  an 
old  soldier  and  an  aged  actress.  An  opera  girl,  and  one  of 
Napoleon's  old  generals — what  could  you  expect  of  either  but 
the  same  thriftlessness,  the  same  careless  ways?  To  the 
adventuress  and  to  the  soldier  fortune  comes  capriciously  and 
through  peril.  There  may  be  astute,  shrewd,  and  politic  mil- 
itary men,  but  they  surely  are  not  the  ordinary  stamp.  The 
typical  soldier  is  supposed  to  be  simple  and  unsuspecting,  a 
child  in  matters  of  business,  and  but  little  fitted  to  cope  with 
the  thousand  and  one  details  of  the  management  of  a  great 
estate,  and  this  more  particularly  in  the  case  of  such  a  fire- 
eater  as  Montcornet.  Gaubertin  flattered  himself  that  he 
could  take  and  hold  the  General  in  the  net  in  which  Mile. 
Laguerre  had  ended  her  days.  But  it  so  happened  that,  in 
the  time  of  the  Emperor,  Montcornet  had  himself  been  in 
very  much  such  a  position  in  Pomerania  as  Gaubertin  held 
at  the  Aigues,  and  the  General  had  had  practical  experience 
of  the  opportunities  of  a  stewardship. 

When  the  old  Cuirassier  took  to  "planting  cabbages,"  to 
use  the  expression  of  the  first  Due  de  Biron,  he  wanted  some 
occupation  to  divert  his  mind  from  his  fall.  Although  he  had 
carried  his  corps  over  to  the  Bourbons,  his  share  of  a  service 
performed  by  several  generals,  and  christened  the  "Disband- 
ing of  the  Army  of  the  Loire,"  could  not  redeem  his  blunder 
of  the  following  year,  when  Montcornet  had  followed  the  Man 
of  the  Hundred  Days  to  his  last  field  of  battle  at  Waterloo. 
During  the  occupation  of  the  Allies  it  was  impossible  for  the 
peer  of  1815  to  remain  on  the  muster-roll  of  the  army,  and 
still  more  impossible  to  retain  his  seat  at  the  Luxembourg. 
So  Montcornet  acted  on  the  advice  of  the  old  marechal  in  dis- 
grace, and  went  to  cultivate  carrots  in  sober  earnest.  The  Gen- 
eral was  not  wanting  in  the  shrewdness  of  an  old  war-wolf. 
During  the  very  first  days  spent  in  investigating  his  posses- 
sions, he  soon  found  out  the  sort  of  man  that  he  had  to  do 
with  in  Gaubertin;  for  the  typical  steward  under  the  old 
noblesse  was  a  variety  of  rogue  familiar  to  almost  all  of  Na- 


THE  PEASANTRY  101 

poleon's  mushroom  nobility  of  dukes  and  marshals  sprung 
from  beds  of  straw. 

The  shrewd  old  Cuirassier  likewise  saw  how  useful  Gau- 
bertin's  profound  experience  of  agricultural  administration 
and  the  manners  and  customs  of  misdemeanants  would  be 
to  him ;  so  he  appeared  to  be  a  continuation  of  Mile.  Laguerre, 
with  an  assumption  of  carelessness  which  deceived  the 
steward.  The  period  of  ineptitude  lasted  until  the  General 
had  time  to  find  out  the  strong  and  weak  points  of  the  Aigues, 
the  ins  and  outs  of  the  receipts,  the  manner  in  which  rents 
were  collected,  the  necessary  improvements  and  economies, 
and  the  ways  in  which  he  was  robbed. 

Then  one  fine  day,  catching  Gaubertin  with  his  hand  in 
the  bag  (to  use  the  time-honored  expression),  the  General  took 
occasion  to  fly  into  one  of  the  fearful  passions  to  which  the 
conquering  hero  is  peculiarly  subject.  Therein  he  committed 
a  capital  error.  It  was  one  of  those  blunders  which  would 
have  shaken  the  future  of  a  man  who  had  not  his  great  wealth 
or  firmness  of  purpose,  and  there,  in  fact,  was  the  origin  of 
the  whole  tissue  of  disasters,  great  and  small,  with  which  this 
story  teems.  Montcornet  had  been  trained  in  the  Imperial 
school,  he  slashed  his  wa}r  through  difficulties,  and  deep  was 
his  scorn  of  civilians.  Montcornet  could  not  see  that  there 
was  any  need  to  mince  matters  when  a  rascally  steward  was 
to  be  sent  about  his  business.  The  General  knew  nothing  of 
civil  life  and  its  countless  precautions,  his  temper  was  not 
improved  by  his  disgrace,  so  he  inflicted  a  deep  mortification 
on  Gaubertin,  who,  moreover,  drew  it  upon  himself  by  a  cyn- 
ical retort  that  infuriated  the  General. 

"So  you  are  living  on  my  land !"  the  Count  had  remarked 
with  grim  hilarity. 

"Did  you  suppose  that  I  could  live  on  what  falls  from 
heaven?"  Gaubertin  retorted  with  a  grin. 

"Get  out  of  this,  you  scamp,  or  I'll  make  you !"  roared 
the  General,  accompanying  the  words  with  several  cuts  of  a 
horse-whip,  though  the  steward  always  denied  a  thrashing 
that  no  one  witnessed. 


102  THE  PEASANTRY 

"I  shall  not  go  till  I  have  my  discharge,"  Gaubertin 
exclaimed  coolly,  as  soon  as  he  had  put  a  distance  between 
himself  and  the  truculent  Cuirassier. 

"We  shall  see  what  they  think  of  you  in  a  court  of  law," 
returned  Montcornet,  with  a  shrug. 

At  the  threat  of  prosecution,  Gaubertin  looked  the  Count 
in  the  face  and  smiled ;  it  was  a  smile  of  peculiar  efficacy,  for 
the  General's  arm  dropped  to  his  side  as  if  the  sinews  had  been 
cut.  Let  us  go  into  the  explanation  of  that  smile. 

Two  years  ago  Gaubertin's  brother-in-law  Gendrin  had  been 
appointed  to  the  presidency  of  the  Court  of  First  Instance, 
where  he  had  long  been  a  judge.  He  owed  the  appointment  to 
the  Comte  de  Soulanges,  who  had  been  made  a  peer  of  France 
in  1814,  and  had  kept  staunch  to  the  Bourbons  during  the 
Hundred  Days.  M.  de  Soulanges  had  asked  the  Keeper  of 
the  Seals  to  nominate  Gendrin.  Such  kinship  as  this  gave 
Gaubertin  a  certain  importance  in  the  country.  A  president 
of  a  Court  of  First  Instance  in  a  small  town  is,  relatively 
speaking,  a  much  greater  person  than  the  president  of  a 
Court-Eoyal  in  a  city  where  there  are  rival  luminaries  in  the 
shape  of  the  commander,  the  bishop,  prefect,  and  receiver- 
general;  a  simple  president  of  a  Court  of  First  Instance 
shines  alone,  for  neither  the  public  prosecutor  nor  the  sub- 
prefect  is  a  permanent  official.  Young  Soudry  and  Gauber- 
tin's son  had  been  friends  as  lads  at  the  Aigues,  and  after- 
wards in  Paris,  and  now  young  Soudry  had  just  received  the 
appointment  of  public-prosecutor's  substitute  in  the  chief 
town  of  the  department. 

Soudry  senior,  once  a  quartermaster  in  an  artillery  regi- 
ment, had  been  wounded  in  an  action  in  defence  of  M.  de 
Soulanges,  then  adjutant-general.  Since  those  days  the 
gendarmerie  had  been  established,  and  M.  de  Soulanges  (now 
a  colonel)  asked  for  a  police-sergeant's  *post  for  the  man  who 
had  saved  his  life,  and,  at  a  later  time,  obtained  a  post  for 
Sou  dry's  son.  And  finally,  when  Mile.  Gaubertin's  marriage 
had  been  definitely  arranged  at  the  Quai  de  Bethune,  the  un- 
just steward  felt  that  ho  had  a  stronger  position  in  the  district 
than  an  unattached  lieutenant-general. 


THE  PEASANTRY  103 

If  this  story  were  nothing  but  a  chronicle  of  the  rupture 
between  the  General  and  his  steward,  it  would  even  then  be 
well  worth  serious  attention,  as  a  guide  to  the  conduct  of  life. 
Those  who  can  profit  by  the  perusal  of  Machiavelli's  treatise 
will  find  it  demonstrated  therein  that,  in  dealing  with  human 
nature,  it  is  a  prudent  course  to  refrain  from  menaces,  to 
proceed  to  act  without  talking  about  it,  to  leave  a  way  of  es- 
cape open  to  a  defeated  enemy,  to  be  very  careful,  as  the  say- 
ing is,  not  to  tread  on  a  serpent's  tail,  and  to  avoid,  like  mur- 
der, any  mortification  to  an  inferior.  A  deed,  once  done,  is 
forgiven  sooner  or  later,  injurious  though  it  may  have  been 
to  other  people's  interests  (a  fact  which  may  be  explained  in 
ways  too  numerous  to  mention),  but  a  wound  dealt  to  self- 
love  is  never  staunched,  and  never  pardoned.  Our  mental  sus- 
ceptibilities are  keener  and,  in  a  sense,  more  vital  than  our 
physical  susceptibilities,  and  the  heart  and  arteries  are  less 
sensitive  than  the  nerves.  In  everything  that  we  do,  in  fact, 
it  is  this  inmost  ego  who  rules  us.  Civil  war  will  quench  an 
ancestral  blood-feud,  as  has  been  seen  in  the  history  of  Breton 
and  Vendean  families;  but  between  the  spoiler  and  the 
spoiled,  the  slanderer  and  his  victim,  no  reconciliation  is  pos- 
sible. People  should  refrain  from  insulting  each  other,  except 
in  epic  poems,  before  a  general  and  final  slaughter. 

The  savage  and  his  near  relation,  the  peasant,  never  make 
use  of  articulate  speech,  except  to  lay  traps  for  their  enemies. 
Ever  since  1789  France  has  been  trying  to  persuade  man- 
kind, against  all  evidence  to  the  contrary,  that  all  men  are 
equal;  you  may  tell  a  man  that  he  is  a  rascal,  and  it  passes 
for  a  harmless  joke ;  but  once  proceed  to  bring  it  home  to  him 
by  detecting  him  in  the  act,  and  enforcing  your  conclusion 
by  a  horsewhip,  once  threaten  him  with  prosecution  and  fail 
to  execute  your  threat,  and  you  set  up  the  old  conditions  of 
inequality  again.  And  if  the  people  cannot  suffer  any  su- 
periority, how  should  any  rogue  forgive  an  honest  man  ? 

Montcornet  should  have  parted  with  his  steward  on  some 
pretext  of  old  obligations  to  fulfil,  some  old  soldier  to  put 
in  his  place ;  and  both  Gaubertin  and  the  General  would  have 


104  THE  PEASANTRY 

known  the  real  reason  perfectly  well.  If  the  latter  had  been 
more  careful  of  the  former's  self-love,  he  would  have  left  an 
open  door  for  the  man's  retreat,  and  Gauhertin  would  have 
left  the  great  landowner  in  peace;  he  would  have  forgotten 
his  defeat  at  the  auction,  and  very  likely  would  have  looked 
for  an  investment  for  his  capital  in  Paris.  But  now  that  he 
was  ignominiously  driven  from  his  post,  he  nursed  a  ran- 
corous hatred  of  his  employer,  one  of  those  hatreds  which  are 
an  element  of  provincial  life;  so  lasting  and  so  pertinacious 
are  they,  that  their  intricate  meshes  amaze  diplomatists, 
whose  cue  it  is  to  be  astonished  at  nothing.  A  burning  thirst 
for  vengeance  counseled  retirement  to  Ville-aux-Fayes ;  there 
he  would  put  himself  in  a  position  which  gave  him  power  to 
annoy  Montcornet,  and  raise  up  enemies  in  sufficient  force  to 
compel  him  to  sell  the  Aigues. 

Everything  combined  to  deceive  the  General.  Nothing  in 
Gaubertin's  appearance  was  calculated  to  warn  or  alarm  him. 
The  steward  had  always  made  it  a  rule  to  pose  not  exactly 
as  a  poor  man,  but  as  a  man  who  found  it  difficult  to  make 
both  ends  meet — a  tradition  which  was  handed  down  by  his 
predecessor.  Therefore  for  the  last  twelve  years  he  put  his 
wife  and  three  children  forward  on  all  occasions,  and  talked 
about  the  heavy  expenses  of  so  large  a  family.  It  was  Mile. 
Laguerre  who  paid  for  his  son's  education  in  Paris ;  Gaubertin 
told  her  that  he  himself  was  too  poor  to  afford  the  expense ; 
and  she,  Claude  Gaubertin's  godmother,  had  allowed  her  dear 
godson  a  hundred  louis  per  annum. 

The  next  day  Gaubertin  appeared  accompanied  by  one  of 
the  keepers,  Courtecuisse  by  name,  and  held  his  head  high, 
and  asked  for  his  discharge.  He  laid  before  the  General  the 
discharges  given  him  by  the  late  Mile.  Laguerre,  all  couched 
in  flattering  terms,  and  begged,  with  ironical  humility,  that 
the  General  would  discover  and  point  out  any  instances  of 
misappropriation  on  his,  Gaubertin's  part.  If  he  received  a 
bonu,e  from  the  timber  merchants  and  farmers  on  the  renewal 
of  contracts  or  leases,  Mile.  Laguerre  had  always  authorized 


THE  PEASANTRY  105 

it  (he  said),  and  she  had  actually  been  a  gainer  by  so  doing; 
and  not  only  so,  by  these  means  she  had  lived  in  peace.  Any 
one  in  the  countryside  would  have  died  for  Mademoiselle; 
but  if  the  General  went  on  in  this  way,  he  was  laying  up 
trouble  in  plenty  for  himself. 

Gaubertin  believed — and  this  last  trait  is  very  common  in 
most  professions  where  men  exercise  their  wits  to  take  their 
neighbor's  goods  in  ways  unprovided  for  by  the  Code — 
Gaubertin  believed  that  he  was  a  perfectly  honest  man.  In 
the  first  place,  there  was  the  old  affair  of  the  coin  wrung 
from  the  tenants  during  the  Terror ;  it  was  so  long  now  since 
he  remitted  the  rents  to  Mile.  Laguerre  in  assignats  and 
pocketed  the  difference,  that  he  had  come  to  regard  the  money 
as  lawful  acquired  gain.  It  was  simply  a  matter  of  exchange. 
Before  he  had  done,  he  began  to  think  that  he  had  even  run 
some  risk  in  taking  silver  crowns,  and  besides,  legally,  made- 
moiselle had  no  right  to  anything  but  assignats.  Legally  is 
a  robust  adverb;  it  carries  the  weight  of  many  ill-gotten 
gains !  Finally,  ever  since  great  landowners  and  stewards 
have  existed,  which  is  to  say,  ever  since  the  first  beginnings  of 
civilization,  the  steward  has  fabricated  for  his  personal  use 
a  chain  of  reasoning  that  finds  favor  with  cookmaids  at  the 
present  day,  and  which  may  be  concisely  stated  as  follows : — 

"If  my  mistress  went  to  market  herself"  (so  the  handmaid 
privately  argues),  "she  perhaps  would  buy  dearer  than  I  do; 
so  she  is  a  gainer,  and  the  profit  that  I  make  had  better  go 
into  my  pocket  than  to  the  shopkeepers." 

"If  Mile.  Laguerre  were  to  manage  the  Aigues  for  herself, 
she  would  not  make  thirty  thousand  francs  out  of  it ;  the  peas- 
ants, and  timber  merchants,  and  laborers  would  rob  her  of  the 
difference;  it  is  more  natural  that  I  should  keep  it,  and  I 
spare  her  a  deal  of  trouble,"  said  Gaubertin  to  himself. 

No  influence  save  the  Catholic  religion  has  power  to  prevent 
such  capitulation  of  conscience;  but  since  1789  religion  in 
France  has  lost  its  hold  on  two-thirds  of  the  population.  Pov- 
erty induces  uniformity,  and  in  the  valley  of  the  Aigues, 
where  the  peasants  were  mentally  very  wide  awake,  they  had 


106  THE  PEASANTRY 

sunk  to  a  frightful  degree  of  moral  degradation.  They  cer- 
tainly went  to  mass  of  a  Sunday,  but  they  stopped  outside 
the  church,  and  had  fallen  into  a  habit  of  meeting  there  regu- 
larly to  conclude  bargains  and  discuss  business. 

The  reader  should  by  this  time  have  an  idea  of  the  extent 
of  the  mischief  done  by  the  easy-going  ways  of  the  first  pupil 
of  the  Academie  royale  de  musique.  Mile.  Laguerre's  selfish- 
ness had  injured  the  cause  of  those  who  have,  always  an  ob- 
ject of  hatred  to  those  who  have  not.  Since  1792  all  the 
landowners  of  France  must  show  a  compact  front,  and  stand 
or  fall  tugether.  Alas !  if  the  families  of  feudal  nobles,  less 
numerous  than  bourgeois  families,  could  not  understand  the 
unity  of  their  interests  in  1400  in  the  time  of  Louis  XI.,  nor 
yet  agaia  in  1600  under  Eichelieu,  how  should  the  bour- 
geoisie of  this  nineteenth  century  (in  spite  of  its  boasted 
progress-)  be  more  united  than  the  old  noblesse?  An  oli- 
garchy cf  a  hundred  thousand  rich  men  has  all  the  drawbacks 
of  a  democracy  with  none  of  its  advantages.  Each  for  him- 
self! Let  each  man  mind  his  own  business!  Family  selfish- 
ness is  stronger  than  the  class  selfishness  so  much  needed  by 
society  in  these  days,  that  oligarchical  selfishness  of  which 
England  has  exhibited  such  a  striking  example  for  the  past 
three  hundred  years.  No  matter  what  is  done,  the  landowners 
will  never  see  any  necessity  for  a  discipline  through  which 
the  Church  has  come  to  be  such  an  admirable  model  of  gov- 
ernment, until  the  moment  when  the  threatened  danger  comes 
home  to  them,  and  then  it  will  be  too  late.  Communism,  that 
living  force  and  practical  logic  of  democracy,  is  already  at- 
tacking society  in  the  domain  of  theory,  whence  it  is  evident 
that  the  proletarian  Samson,  grown  prudent,  will  henceforth 
sap  the  pillars  of  society  in  the  cellar,  instead  of  shaking  them 
in  the  banqueting  hall. 


THE  PEASANTRY  107 

VII 

OF  EXTINCT   SOCIAL   SPECIES 

THE  Aigues  must  have  a  steward,  for  the  General  had  no  idea 
of  giving  up  the  pleasures  of  the  winter  season  in  Paris,  where 
he  had  a  splendid  mansion  in  the  Eue  Neuve-des-Mathurins. 
So  he  looked  out  for  a  successor  to  Gaubertin;  but,  in  truth, 
he  was  at  less  pains  to  find  a  steward  than  Gaubertin  to  put 
a  man  of  his  own  choosing  into  the  place. 

Of  all  responsible  posts,  there  is  not  one  which  demands 
greater  experience  and  more  activity  than  the  stewardship  of 
a  great  estate.  The  difficulty  of  finding  the  man  is  only  ap- 
preciated by  great  landowners,  and  becomes  acute  only  at  a 
distance  of  say  forty  leagues  from  the  capital.  That  is  the  limit 
of  the  area  which  supplies  the  Paris  markets,  the  limit  also 
of  steady  rents  and  of  long  leases,  and  of  tenants  with  capital 
in  competition  for  them.  Tenants  of  this  class  come  into 
town  in  cabriolets  and  pay  their  rent  with  cheques,  if  indeed 
their  salesman  at  the  Great  Market  does  not  make  their  pay- 
ments for  them.  There  is  such  brisk  competition  for  farms 
in  the  departments  of  Seine-et-Oise,  Seine-et-Marne,  Oise, 
Eure-et-Loire,  Seine-Inferieure,  and  Loiret,  that  capital  does 
not  always  return  one  and  a  half  per  cent.  Even  compared 
with  the  returns  of  land  in  Holland,  Belgium,  and  England, 
this  produce  is  enormous;  but  beyond  a  limit  of  fifty  leagues 
from  Paris,  a  large  estate  means  so  many  different  forms  of 
cultivation,  so  many  and  such  different  crops,  that  farming 
becomes  an  industry,  with  a  manufacturer's  risks.  A  great 
landowner  under  these  circumstances  is  nothing  but  a  mer- 
chant, who  must  find  a  market  for  his  produce  like  any  iron- 
master or  cotton-spinner.  Nor  is  he  without  competitors; 
the  peasants  and  the  small  proprietors  cut  down  his  profits 
remorselessly  by  descending  to  transactions  in  which  no  gen- 
tleman will  engage. 

A  steward  should  know  the  system  of  land  measurement, 
VOL.  10—33 


108  THE  PEASANTRY 

the  customs  of  the  countryside,  the  methods  of  sale  and  ex- 
ploitation, and  must  be  able  to  sail  pretty  near  the  wind  in 
his  employer's  interest.  He  must  understand  book-keeping; 
and,  besides  enjoying  the  best  of  health,  must  have  a  decided 
taste  for  equitation  and  an  active  life.  He  is  the  master's  rep- 
resentative, and  always  in  communication  with  him,  and  can- 
not be  a  man  of  the  people.  And  as  few  stewards'  salaries 
exceed  a  thousand  crowns  per  annum,  the  problem  of  discov- 
ering the  model  steward  would  appear  to  be  insoluble.  How 
should  a  man  combining  so  many  precious  qualities  be  found 
at  such  a  moderate  price,  where  any  employment  is  open 
to  him  in  this  country?  .  .  .  Send  for  a  man  who  does 
not  know  the  district,  and  you  shall  pay  dear  for  the  expe- 
rience he  requires.  Train  up  a  youth  who  belongs  to  the 
neighborhood,  and  in  all  likelihood  you  cocker  ingratitude. 
So  you  are  left  to  choose  between  honest  ineptitude,  so  slow 
or  so  short-sighted  as  to  injure  your  interests,  and  self-seek- 
ing cleverness.  Wherefore  the  classification  and  natural  his- 
tory of  stewards  was  thus  summed  up  by  a  great  Polish  land- 
owner, "There  are  two  varieties  here,"  said  he ;  "the  first  kind 
of  steward  thinks  of  no  one  but  himself;  the  second  thinks 
of  us  as  well  as  of  himself ;  happy  the  landowner  who  can  put 
his  hand  on  the  second !  As  for  the  steward  who  only  thinks 
of  your  interests,  he  has  never  been  seen  here  up  to  the  pres- 
ent time !" 

An  example  of  a  steward  who  bears  his  employer's  interests 
in  mind,  as  well  as  his  own,  has  been  given  elsewhere;*  Gau- 
bertin  is  the  steward  who  thinks  of  nothing  but  his  own  for- 
tune ;  as  for  the  third  term  of  the  problem,  any  representation 
of  him  would  probably  be  regarded  as  a  fancy  portrait;  he 
was  known  to  the  old  noblesse;  but  the  type  vanished  with 
them.f  The  continual  subdivision  of  fortunes  inevitably 
brings  about  a  change  in  the  way  of  life  of  the  aristocracy. 
If  there  are  not  at  present  twenty  fortunes  administered  by 
a  steward,  in  fifty  years'  time  there  will  not  be  a  hundred 

*  See  Vn  D/but  dam  fa  Vie.  t  Le  Cabinet  des  Antiques. 


THE  PEASANTRY  109 

great  estates  left  for  stewards  to  administer,  unless  some 
change  is  made  meanwhile  in  the  law.  Every  rich  landowner 
will  be  obliged  to  look  closely  to  his  own  interests  himself. 
This  process  of  transformation,  even  now  begun,  suggested 
the  remark  made  by  a  witty  old  lady,  who  was  asked  why  she 
had  spent  the  summer  in  Paris  since  1830 :  "Since  the 
chateaux  became  farmhouses  I  have  ceased  to  visit  them,"  she 
said. 

But  what  will  be  the  end  of  a  dispute  which  waxes  hotter 
and  hotter  between  man  and  man,  between  rich  and  poor? 
This  Etude  has  been  undertaken  to  throw  light  upon  this 
terrible  social  question,  and  for  no  other  reason. 

The  General  had  dismissed  Gaubertin,  and  the  General's 
awkward  predicament  may  be  imagined.  While  saying 
vaguely  to  himself,  like  all  persons  who  are  free  to  act  or  no, 
"I  will  get  rid  of  that  rogue,"  he  had  not  reckoned  with  fate, 
nor  with  his  own  furious  outbursts  of  anger,  the  anger  of  a 
choleric  fire-eater,  ready  to  break  out  as  soon  as  some  flagrant 
misdeed  should  force  him  to  raise  the  eyelids  which  he  de- 
liberately closed. 

Montcornet,  a  Parisian  born  and  bred,  was  a  landowner  for 
the  first  time  in  his  life,  and  his  preliminary  studies  of  the 
country  had  convinced  him  that  some  intermediary  between 
a  man  in  his  position  and  so  many  peasants  was  absolutely 
necessary;  but  he  had  omitted  to  provide  himself  beforehand 
with  a  steward. 

Gaubertin  in  the  course  of  an  exchange  of  courtesies, 
which  lasted  for  a  couple  of  hours,  discovered  the  General's 
predicament ;  so  on  leaving  the  house,  the  ex-steward  bestrode 
his  cob,  and  galloped  off  to  take  counsel  with  Soudry  at  Sou- 
langes. 

No  sooner  had  he  said,  "The  general  and  I  have  parted 
company;  how  can  we  fit  him  with  a  steward  of  our  own 
choosing?"  than  the  Soudrys  saw  what  their  friend  had  in 
mind.  It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  Police-Sergeant  Soudry 
had  been  in  office  in  the  canton  for  seventeen  years,  and  that 


110  THE  PEASANTRY 

to  back  him  he  had  a  wife  endowed  with  the  cunning  peculiai 
to  an  opera-singer's  waiting-maid. 

"He  will  go  a  long  way  before  he  will  find  any  one  as  good 
as  poor  Sibilet,"  said  Mme.  Soudry. 

"His  goose  is  cooked !"  cried  Gaubertin,  still  red  with  the 
humiliations  he  had  been  through. 

"Lupin,"  he  went  on,  turning  to  the  notary  who  was  pres- 
ent, "just  go  down  to  Ville-aux-Fayes  and  prime  Mare- 
chal,  in  case  our  fine  Cuirassier  goes  to  ask  him  for  informa- 
tion." 

Marechal  was  the  local  solicitor  who  had  bought  the  Aigues, 
and  had  naturally  been  recommended  to  Montcornet  by  his 
own  family  solicitor  in  Paris  after  the  happy  conclusion  of 
the  bargain. 

The  Sibilet  to  whom  they  alluded,  the  oldest  son  of  the 
clerk  of  the  court  at  Ville-aux-Fayes,  was  a  notary's  clerk 
without  a  penny  to  bless  himself  with.  He  had  fallen  madly 
in  love  at  the  age  of  twenty-five  with  the  daughter  of  the 
justice  of  the  peace  at  Soulanges. 

That  worthy  magistrate,  Sarcus  by  name,  having  a  stipend 
of  fifteen  hundred  francs,  had  married  a  penniless  girl,  the 
oldest  sister  of  the  Soulanges  apothecary,  M.  Vermut.  Mile. 
Sarcus  was  an  only  daughter,  but  her  beauty  was  all  her 
dowry,  and  she  could  not  be  said  to  live  on  the  salary  of  a 
country  notary's  clerk.  Young  Sibilet  was  related  to  Gauber- 
tin  (his  precise  degree  of  relationship  would  have  been  rather 
difficult  to  trace  among  the  family  ramifications  of  a  small 
town  where  all  the  middle-class  people  were  cousins)  ;  but, 
thanks  to  his  father  and  to  Gaubertin,  he  had  a  modest  place 
in  the  Land  Eegistration  Department.  To  this  luckless 
young  man's  lot  fell  the  alarming  blessing  of  two  children  in 
three  years'  time.  His  own  father  had  a  family  of  five,  and 
could  do  nothing  to  help  his  son ;  his  father-in-law,  the  jus- 
tice of  the  peace,  had  nothing  but  his  house  in  Soulanges, 
and  a  thousand  crowns  of  income,  so  Mme.  Sibilet,  the 
younger,  and  her  two  children,  lived  for  the  most  part  under 
her  father's  roof ;  and  Adolphe  Sibilet,  whose  duties  took  him 


THE  TEASANTKY  111 

all  over  the  department,  only  saw  his  Adeline  at  intervals, 
an  arrangement  which  perhaps  explains  the  fruitfulness  of 
some  marriages. 

Gaubertin's  exclamation  will  he  easily  understood  by  the 
light  of  this  summary  of  Sibilet's  history,  but  a  few  explana- 
tory details  must  be  added.  Adolphe  Sibilet,  surpassingly  ill- 
favored,  as  has  been  seen  in  a  preceding  sketch,  belonged  to 
that  class  of  men  whose  only  way  to  a  woman's  heart  lies 
through  the  mayor's  office  and  the  church.  With  something 
of  the  suppleness  of  a  steel  spring,  he  would  relinquish  his 
idea  to  seize  on  it  again  at  a  later  day,  a  shifty  disposition 
of  mind  closely  resembling  baseness;  but  in  the  course  of  an 
apprenticeship  served  in  a  country  notary's  office,  Sibilet 
had  learned  to  hide  this  defect  beneath  a  gruff  manner,  which 
simulated  a  strength  which  he  did  not  possess.  Plenty  of 
hollow  natures  mask  their  emptiness  in  this  way;  deal  their 
own  measure  to  them,  and  you  shall  see  them  collapse  like  a 
balloon  at  a  pin-prick.  This  was  the  clerk's  son.  But  as 
men,  for  the  most  part,  are  not  observers,  and  as  among  ob- 
servers three-fourths  observe  after  the  fact,  Adolphe  Sibilet's 
grumbling  manner  was  taken  for  the  result  of  an  honest,  out- 
spoken nature,  a  capacity  much  praised  by  his  employer,  and 
an  upright  integrity  which  had  never  been  put  to  the  proof. 
Sometimes  a  man's  defects  are  as  useful  to  him  as  better 
qualities  to  his  neighbor. 

Adeline  Sarcus,  a  nice-looking  young  woman,  had  been 
brought  up  by  a  mother  (who  died  three  years  before  her  mar- 
riage), as  carefully  as  only  daughters  can  be  educated  in  a 
little  out-of-the-way  place.  Adeline  was  in  love  with  the 
handsome  Lupin,  only  son  of  the  Soulanges  notary.  But  her 
romance  was  still  in  its  early  chapters  when  Lupin  senior 
(who  intended  his  son  to  marry  Mile.  Elise  Gaubertin)  sen' 
young  Amaury  Lupin  to  Paris  into  the  office  of  Maitre  Grot 
tat,  notary;  and  under  the  pretence  of  studying  the  art  of 
conveyancing  and  drawing  up  contracts,  Amaury  led  a  wild 
life,  and  got  into  debt  under  the  auspices  of  another  clerk 
in  the  same  office,  one  George  Marest,  a  wealthy  young  fellow, 


112  THE  PEASANTRY 

who  initiated  Lupin  into  the  mysteries  of  Parisian  life.  By 
the  time  that  Maitre  Lupin  came  to  fetch  his  son  home  again, 
Adeline  had  changed  her  name,  and  was  Mme.  Sibilet.  In 
fact,  when  the  amorous  Adolphe  presented  himself,  Sarcus, 
the  old  justice  of  the  peace,  acting  on  a  hint  from  Lupin 
senior,  hastened  on  a  marriage,  to  which  Adeline  resigned 
herself  in  despair. 

An  assessor's  place  is  not  a  career.  Like  many  other  de- 
partments which  offer  no  prospects,  it  is  a  sort  of  hole  in  the 
administrative  colander.  The  men  who  start  in  life  through 
one  of  these  holes  (say  in  the  Ordnance  Survey,  Department 
of  Eoads  and  Bridges,  or  the  teaching  profession)  always 
discover  a  little  late  that  cleverer  men  than  they,  seated  beside 
them,  are  "kept  moist  by  the  sweat  of  the  people"  (in  the  lan- 
guage of  Opposition  writers)  every  time  that  the  colander 
is  dipped  into  the  taxes  by  means  of  the  machinery  called  the 
Budget.  Adolphe,  working  early  and  late,  and  earning  little, 
very  soon  discovered  the  bottomless  barrenness  of  his  hole; 
so  as  he  trotted  from  commune  to  commune,  spending  his 
salary  on  traveling  expenses  and  shoe  leather,  his  thoughts 
were  busy  with  schemes  for  finding  a  permanent  and  profit- 
able situation. 

No  one  can  imagine,  unless  indeed  he  happens  to  squint 
and  to  have  two  children  born  in  lawful  wedlock,  how  three 
years  of  struggle  and  love  had  developed  ambition  in  this 
young  fellow,  who  had  a  mental  squint  resembling  his  phys- 
ical infirmity,  and  whose  happiness  halted,  as  it  were.  Per- 
haps an  incomplete  happiness  is  the  chief  cause  of  most  scoun- 
drelly actions  and  untold  basenesses  committed  in  secret; 
it  may  be  that  we  can  more  easily  endure  hopeless  misery  than 
steady  rain,  with  brief  glimpses  of  sunshine  and  love.  Just  as 
the  body  contracts  diseases,  the  soul  contracts  the  canker  of 
envy.  In  little  natures  envy  becomes  a  base  and  brutal  cov- 
etousness,  shrinking  from  sight,  but  from  nothing  else;  in 
cultivated  minds  it  fosters  subversive  doctrines,  which  a  111:111 
uses  as  a  stepping-stone  to  raise  himself  above  his  superiors. 
Might  not  the  situation  be  summed  up  in  an  aphorism,  "Tell 
me  what  you  have,  and  I  will  tell  you  your  opinions?" 


THE  PEASANTRY  113 

Adolphe  was  fond  of  his  wife,  but  he  constantly  said  to 
himself,  "I  have  made  a  mistake ;  I  have  three  sets  of  shackles, 
and  only  one  pair  of  legs;  I  ought  to  have  made  my  way 
before  I  married.  I  might  have  found  an  Adeline  any  day; 
but  now  Adeline  stands  in  my  way." 

Adolphe  had  gone  to  see  his  relative  Gaubertin  three  times 
in  as  many  years.  A  few  words  that  he  let  fall  told  Gaubertin 
that  here  in  his  relative's  soul  was  the  mud  which  hardens 
under  the  fiery  heat  of  the  temptation  of  legalized  robbery. 
Warily  he  probed  this  nature,  which  seemed  plastic  to  his  pur- 
pose, provided  it  were  worth  while  to  yield.  Adolphe  Sibilet 
grumbled  on  each  occasion. 

"Just  find  me  something  to  do,  cousin,"  he  said.  "Take 
me  on  as  your  clerk,  and  make  me  your  successor.  I  would 
remove  mountains  to  give  my  Adeline,  I  will  not  say  luxury, 
but  a  modest  competence.  You  made  M.  Leclercq's  fortune; 
why  should  you  not  start  me  in  the  banking  line  in  Paris  ?" 

"We  will  see.  Some  day  I  will  find  a  place  for  you,"  his 
ambitious  relative  would  reply.  "Meantime,  make  acquaint- 
ances, everything  helps." 

In  this  frame  of  mind  a  letter  from  Mme.  Soudry,  bidding 
him  "come  at  once,"  brought  Adolphe  in  hot  haste  to  Sou- 
langes  through  a  region  of  castles  in  the  air. 

The  Soudrys  explained  to  Sarcus  that  on  him  devolved  the 
duty  of  calling  on  the  General  on  the  morrow  to  put  in  a 
word  for  his  son-in-law,  and  suggest  Adolphe  for  the  vacant 
position.  Acting  on  the  advice  of  Mme.  Soudry,  the  local 
oracle,  the  old  man  had  taken  his  daughter  with  him,  and 
the  sight  of  her  had  disposed  Montcornet  in  their  favor. 

"I  shall  not  decide  until  I  have  made  inquiries,"  the  Gen- 
eral said,  "but  I  will  not  look  out  for  any  one  else  until  I 
have  seen  whether  or  no  your  son-in-law  is  in  all  respects 
the  man  for  the  place.  The  desire  of  settling  so  charming 
a  young  lady  at  the  Aigues 

"The  mother  of  two  children,  General,"  said  Adeline 
adroitly,  to  turn  off  the  old  soldier's  compliments. 

All  the  General's  inquiries  were  cleverly  anticipated  by  the 


114  THE  PEASANTRY 

Soudrys,  with  Gaubertin  and  Lupin,  who  skilfully  obtained 
for  their  candidate  the  influence  of  the  leading  men  in  the 
principal  town  of  the  canton — Councillor  Gendrin  of  the 
Court-Royal  (a  distant  relation  of  the  president  at  Ville-aux- 
Fayes) ;  Baron  Bourlac,  attorney-general,  and  young  Soudry's 
chief;  and  Sarcus,  councillor  of  the  prefecture,  third  cousin 
to  Adeline's  father.  Everybody,  from  the  General's  solicitor 
to  the  prefect  (to  whom  the  General  went  in  person),  had 
a  good  word  for  the  underpaid  official,  "so  interesting"  he 
was  said  to  be.  Sibilet's  marriage  made  him  as  irreproachable 
as  one  of  Miss  Edgeworth's  novels,  and  marked  him  out  as 
a  man  above  mercenary  motives. 

The  time  which  the  steward  spent  perforce  at  the  Aigues 
was  turned  to  profit.  He  did  all  that  in  him  lay  to  make 
trouble  and  annoyance  for  his  old  employer,  but  a  single  little 
scene  will  give  a  sufficient  idea  of  the  rest.  The  day  after 
his  dismissal  he  made  an  opportunity  of  finding  Courtecuisse, 
the  one  forester  employed  under  his  rule  at  the  Aigues,  which 
really  required  three  at  the  least. 

"Well,  M.  Gaubertin,"  remarked  the  other,  "so  you  have 
had  words  with  the  master,  have  you?" 

"You  know  that  already!"  exclaimed  Gaubertin.  "Well, 
yes.  The  General  takes  it  upon  himself  to  order  us  about  like 
his  Cuirassiers;  he  does  not  know  us  Burgundians.  M.  le 
Comte  was  not  satisfied  with  my  services,  and  as  I  was  not 
satisfied  with  his  ways,  we  dismissed  each  other;  we  almost 
came  to  blows  over  it,  for  he  is  a  perfect  tempest.  Look  out 
for  yourself,  Courtecuisse !  Ah !  old  boy,  I  once  thought  to 
have  given  you  a  better  master " 

"I  know  you  did,"  said  the  keeper,  "and  I  would  have 
served  you  well.  Lord  !  after  knowing  each  other  these  twenty 
years. — You  took  me  on  here  in  poor  dear  sainted  Madame's 
time !  Ah !  a  kind  woman  she  was ;  they  don't  make  such  as 
her  now !  The  place  has  lost  a  mother  in  her." 

"I  say,  Courtecuisse,  if  you  are  willing,  you  can  do  us  a 
•fine  good  turn." 


THE  PEASANTRY  115 

"Then  are  you  going  to  stop  in  the  place  ?  We  heard  you 
were  going  to  Paris." 

"No.  I  shall  find  something  to  do  at  Ville-aux-Fayes,  and 
see  how  things  turn  out.  The  General  does  not  know  the 
people  he  is  dealing  with;  he  will  be  hated,  do  you  see?  I 
must  wait  and  see  if  anything  turns  up.  Go  softly  about 
your  business  here ;  he  will  tell  you  to  carry  things  with  a  high 
hand,  for  he  can  see  well  enough  where  the  waste  goes  on. 
But  do  not  you  be  so  thick-headed  as  to  lay  yourself  open  to  a 
drubbing,  and  maybe  worse  than  a  drubbing,  from  the  people 
round  about  for  the  sake  of  his  timber." 

"Dear  M,  Gaubertin,  he  will  turn  me  away,  and  you  know 
how  very  well  off  I  am  at  the  Avonne  gate." 

"The  General  will  be  sick  of  his  property  before  long,"  said 
Gaubertin;  "it  will  not  be  long  before  you  come  back  if  he 
does  turn  you  off. — And  besides,  do  you  see  these  woods 
here?"  he  added,  waving  his  hand  towards  the  landscape, 
"I  am  stronger  there  than  the  masters." 

They  were  talking  out  in  the  field. 

"These  Arminacs  from  Paris  ought  to  keep  to  their  gutters 
in  Paris,"  said  the  keeper. 

That  word  Arminacs  has  come  down  from  the  fifteenth 
century,  when  the  Armagnacs,  the  Parisians,  were  hostile  to 
the  Duke  of  Burgundy.  It  is  a  word  of  abuse  to-day  on  the 
outskirts  of  Upper  Burgundy,  where  it  is  mispronounced  in 
various  ways  in  different  districts. 

"He  shall  go  back,  but  not  before  he  has  had  a  thrashing !" 
said  Gaubertin.  "Some  of  these  days  we  will  turn  the  park 
at  the  Aigues  into  ploughed  land,  for  it  is  robbing  the  people 
to  keep  nine  hundred  acres  of  the  best  land  in  the  valley  for 
the  pleasure  of  an  upstart." 

"Lord !  that  would  keep  four  hundred  families !"  put  in 
Courtecuisse. 

"Well,  if  you  want  two  acres  for  yourself  out  of  it,  you 
must  help  us  to  make  an  outlaw  of  that  cur " 

While  Gaubertin  was  fulminating  his  sentence  of  excom- 
munication, the  worthy  justice  of  the  peace  was  introducing 


116  THE  PEASANTRY 

his  son-in-law,  Adolphe  Sibilet,  to  the  General.  Adeleine  had 
come  with  the  two  children  in  the  basket-chaise  borrowed 
of  Sarcus'  registrar,  a  M.  Gourdon,  brother  of  the  Soulanges 
doctor,  and  a  richer  man  than  the  justice.  This  kind  of  thing, 
which  suits  but  ill  with  the  dignity  of  the  magistrate's  office, 
is  to  be  seen  everywhere;  every  justice's  clerk  is  richer  than 
the  justice  himself;  every  clerk  of  a  Court  of  First  Instance 
is  better  paid  than  the  president ;  whereas  it  would  seem  only 
natural  to  pay  the  subordinate,  not  by  fees,  but  by  a  fixed 
salary,  and  so  to  cut  down  the  expenses  of  litigation. 

The  General  was  well  pleased  with  the  worthy  functionary's 
character  and  straightforwardness,  and  with  Adeline's  charm- 
ing appearance;  and,  in  fact,  these  two  made  their  promises 
in  all  good  faith,  for  neither  father  nor  daughter  knew  of  the 
diplomatic  part  cut  out  for  Sibilet  by  Gaubertin;  so  M.  de 
Montcornet  at  once  made  to  the  young  and  interesting  couple 
proposals  which  would  make  the  position  of  steward  of  the 
manor  equal  to  that  of  a  sub-prefect  of  the  first  class. 

A  lodge  built  by  Bouret,  partly  as  a  feature  of  the  land- 
scape, partly  as  a  house  for  the  steward,  was  assigned  to  the 
Sibilets.  It  was  a  picturesque  building  in  the  same  style  as 
the  Blangy  gate,  which  has  been  sufficiently  described  already ; 
Gaubertin  had  previously  lived  there.  The  General  showed 
no  intention  of  putting  down  the  riding-horse  which  Mile. 
Laguerre  had  allowed  Gaubertin  for  his  own  use,  on  account 
of  the  size  of  the  estate,  and  the  distance  he  was  obliged  to 
go  to  markets  and  on  other  necessary  business.  The  new 
steward  was  allowed  a  hundred  bushels  of  wheat,  three  hogs- 
heads of  wine,  as  much  firewood  as  he  required,  oats  and 
barley  in  abundance,  and  three  per  cent  upon  the  receipts. 
If  Mile.  Laguerre  had  drawn  more  than  forty  thousand  livres 
of  income  from  the  estate  in  1800,  the  General  thought,  and 
with  good  reason,  that  after  all  her  numerous  and  important 
purchases  it  should  bring  in  sixty  thousand  in  1818.  The 
new  steward,  therefore,  might  look  to  make  nearly  two  thou- 
sand francs  in  money  some  day.  He  would  live  rent  free 
and  tax  free,  with  no  expenses  for  food,  or  fuel,  or  horse, 


THE  PEASANTRY  117 

or  poultry-yard;  and  besides  all  this,  the  Count  allowed  him 
a  kitchen  garden,  and  promised  not  to  consider  a  day's  work 
done  in  it  hy  the  gardener  now  and  again.  Such  advantages 
were  certainly  worth  a  good  two  thousand  francs.  The  stew- 
ardship of  the  Aigues  after  the  assessorship  was  a  transition 
from  penury  to  wealth. 

"If  you  devote  yourself  to  my  interests,"  said  the  General, 
"I  may  do  more  for  you.  For  one  thing,  I  shall  have  it  in 
my  power  to  appoint  you  to  collect  the  taxes  in  Conches, 
Blangy,  and  Cerneux,  separating  those  three  places  from  the 
Soulanges  division.  In  short,  as  soon  as  you  bring  the  net 
receipts  up  to  sixty  thousand  francs,  you  shall  have  your  re- 
ward." 

Unluckily,  the  worthy  Sarcus  and  Adeline,  in  the  joy  of 
their  hearts,  were  so  imprudent  as  to  tell  Mme«  Soudry  about 
the  Count's  promise.  They  forgot  that  the  receiver  at  Sou- 
langes was  one  Guerbet,  brother  of  the  postmaster  at  Conches, 
and  a  connection,  as  will  be  seen  later,  of  the  Gendrins  and 
Gaubertins. 

"It  will  not  be  easy  to  do,  my  child,"  said  Mme.  Soudry,  "but 
do  not  hinder  the  Count  from  setting  about  it ;  no  one  knows 
how  easily  the  hardest  things  are  done  in  Paris.  I  have  seen 
the  Chevalier  Gluck  down  on  his  knees  to  Madame  that's  gone, 
and  she  sang  his  part  for  him — she  that  would  have  cut  herself 
in  pieces  for  Piccini,  and  Piccini  was  one  of  the  most  agree- 
able men  of  those  days.  He  never  came  to  Madame's  house, 
dear  gentleman,  but  he  would  put  his  arm  round  my  waist 
and  call  me  his  'pretty  rogue.' '; 

"Oh,  indeed !"  cried  the  sergeant,  when  his  wife  retailed 
this  piece  of  news,  "so  he  thinks  that  he  will  do  as  he 
likes  with  the  place,  turn  things  upside  down,  and  order 
people  about  right  and  left  as  if  they  were  men  in  his  regi- 
ment. These  officers  have  domineering  ways !  But  wait  a 
while,  we  have  M.  de  Soulanges  and  M.  de  Ronquerolles 
on  our  side.  Poor  old  Guerbet,  how  little  he  suspects  that 
they  mean  to  pluck  the  finest  roses  off  his  tree." 

The  lady's  maid  had  this  piece  of  Dorat  phraseology  from 


118  THE  PEASANTRY 

Mile.  Laguerre,  who  learned  it  of  Bouret,  who  had  it  from 
some  editor  of  the  Mercure.  And  now  Soudry  used  it  so  often 
that  it  became  a  current  saying  at  Soulanges. 

Now  "old  Guerbet,"  receiver  of  taxes  at  Soulanges,  was  a 
local  wit,  the  stock  comic  character  of  the  little  town,  and  one 
of  the  notables  in  Mme.  Soudry's  set.  The  sergeant's  out- 
burst exactly  expressed  the  general  feeling  towards  the  master 
of  the  Aigues.  From  Conches  to  Ville-aux-Fayes  the  whole 
district  had  been  poisoned  against  him  by  Gaubertin's  efforts. 

Sibilet's  installation  took  place  towards  the  end  of  the 
autumn  of  1817.  The  year  1818  came  and  went,  and  the 
General  never  set  foot  on  the  estate.  He  was  occupied  by  his 
own  approaching  marriage,  which  took  place  early  in  1819, 
and  he  spent  most  of  the  summer  in  paying  court  to  his  be- 
trothed in  his  future  father-in-law's  chateau  near  Alengon. 
Besides  the  Aigues  and  his  splendid  townhouse,  General  de 
Montcornet  possessed  an  income  of  sixty  thousand  francs  in 
the  Funds,  and  drew  the  pay  of  a  lieutenant-general  on  the 
reserve.  Yet,  although  Napoleon  had  made  the  brilliant  sol- 
dier a  Count  of  the  Empire,  granting  him  for  arms  a  shield 
bearing  four  coats  quarterly;  the  first,  azure,  on  a  desert  or 
three  pyramids  argent;  the  second,  sinople,  three  bugles  ar- 
gent; the  third,  gules,  a  cannon  or,  mounted  on  a  gun  carriage 
sable,  in  chief  a  crescent  of  the  second;  the  fourth,  or  a  crown 
sinople,  with  the  mediaeval  sounding  motto,  Sonnez  la  charge, 
Montcornet  was  conscious  that  his  father  had  been  a  cabinet- 
maker in  the  Faubourg  Saint-Antoine,  a  fact  which  he  was 
perfectly  willing  to  forget.  Wherefore,  consumed  with  a  de- 
sire to  be  a  peer  of  France,  he  counted  as  naught  his  grand 
cordon  of  the  Legion  of  Honor,  his  cross  of  Saint-Louis,  and 
a  hundred  and  forty  thousand  francs  of  income.  The  demon 
of  titles  had  bitten  him,  the  sight  of  a  blue  ribbon  drove  him 
distracted,  and  the  heroic  fighter  on  Essling  field  would  have 
lapped  all  the  mud  on  the  Pont  Royal  to  gain  an  entrance 
into  the  set  of  the  Navarreins,  Lenoncourts,  Maufrigneuses, 
d'Espards,  and  Vandenesses,  the  families  of  Grandlieu,  Ver- 
neuil,  d'Herouville,  Chaulieu,  and  so  forth. 

In  the  year  1818,  when  it  became  plain  to  him  that  there 


THE  PEASANTRY  11$ 

was  no  hope  of  a  return  of  the  Bonapartes,  Montcornet 
availed  himself  of  the  friendly  offices  of  his  friends'  wives. 
Those  ladies  advertised  in  the  Faubourg  Saint-Germain  that 
the  General  was  ready  to  give  heart  and  hand  and  fortune 
and  a  house  m  town  as  the  price  of  an  alliance  with  any  great 
family  whatsoever. 

It  was  the  Duchesse  de  Carigliano  who  succeeded  after  un- 
told efforts  in  finding  a  suitable  match  in  one  of  the  three 
branches  of  the  Troisville  family,  to  wit,  that  of  the  Viscount 
who  had  been  in  the  Russian  service  since  1789,  and  came 
back  with  the  emigres  in  1815.  The  Viscount  had  only  a 
younger  brother's  share  when  he  married  a  Princesse  Scher- 
bellof  with  near  a  million  to  her  fortune;  but  his  estate  had 
been  burdened  since  by  two  sons  and  three  daughters.  His 
ancient  and  powerful  family  numbered  among  its  members 
a  peer  of  France,  the  Marquis  de  Troisviile,  head  of  the  oldest 
branch;  as  well  as  two  deputies,  each  with  a  numerous  pro- 
geny all  busy  in  getting  their  share  out  of  the  taxes,  hangers- 
on  attached  to  the  ministry  and  the  court  like  goldfishes  about 
a  crust.  So  soon  as  Montcornet  was  introduced  into  this 
family  by  one  of  the  most  zealous  Bourbon  partisans  among 
Napoleon's  duchesses,  he  was  well  received.  Montcornet 
asked,  in  return  for  his  money  and  a  blind  affection  for  his 
wife,  for  a  post  in  the  Garde  Royale,  a  marquis'  patent,  and 
to  be  in  time  a  peer  of  France,  but  all  that  the  Troisvilles 
promised  him  was  the  influence  and  support  of  their  three 
branches. 

"Y"ou  know  what  that  means,"  said  the  Marechale  to  her 
old  friend,  complaining  that  the  promise  was  rather  vague. 
"No  one  can  answer  for  the  King;  we  can  only  prompt  the 
Royal  will." 

Montcornet  made  Virginie  de  Troisville  his  residuary  lega- 
tee in  the  marriage-contract.  Completely  subjugated  by  his 
wife,  as  explained  by  Blondet's  letter,  he  was  still  without 
other  heirs,  but  he  had  been  presented  at  the  court  of  Louis 
XVIII.,  and  his  Majesty  had  conferred  the  ribbon  of  Saint- 
Louis  upon  the  old  Bonapartist,  and  allowed  him  to  quarter 


120  THE  PEASANTRY 

his  preposterous  scutcheon  with  the  arms  of  Troisville;  the 
marquisate  and  peerage  were  'promised  as  rewards  to  future 
devotion. 

But,  a  few  days  after  the  audience,  the  Due  de  Berri  was 
murdered,  the  Pavilion  Marsan  carried  all  before  it,  Villele 
came  into  power,  and  all  the  Troisvilles'  threads  of  diplo- 
macy were  broken  off;  new  points  of  attachment  must  be 
found  for  them  among  the  ministry. 

"We  must  wait,"  said  the  Troisvilles,  and  Montcornet,  over- 
whelmed as  he  was  with  civilities  in  the  Faubourg  Saint- 
Germain,  waited.  This  was  how  the  General  came  to  stay 
away  from  the  Aigues  in  1818. 

In  his  happiness  (ineffable  bliss  for  the  shopkeeper's  son 
from  the  Faubourg  Saint- Antoine)  with  this  young  wife, 
highly  bred,  lively,  and  sweet-natured,  he  must  shower  all 
the  delights  of  Paris  upon  the  daughter  of  the  Troisvilles, 
who  had  opened  all  doors  in  the  Faubourg  Saint-Germain  to 
him;  and  these  diverse  joys  so  completely  effaced  the  un- 
pleasant scene  with  the  steward  from  his  mind,  that  Gau- 
bertin  and  his  doings  and  his  very  name  were  quite  forgotten. 

In  1820  the  General  brought  the  Countess  into  the  country 
to  show  her  the  Aigues,  and  passed  Sibilet's  accounts  and 
ratified  his  actions  without  looking  too  closely  into  them. 
Happiness  is  no  haggler.  The  Countess  was  delighted  to  find 
the  steward's  wife  such  a  charming  woman,  and  made  presents 
to  her  and  to  the  children,  with  whom  she  played  for  a  little 
while.  She  also  commanded  some  alterations  in  the  house, 
and  an  architect  was  summoned  from  Paris ;  for  she  proposed 
(and  the  General  was  wild  with  joy  at  the  thought)  to  spend 
six  months  out  of  the  twelve  in  such  a  splendid  abode.  All 
the  General's  savings  were  spent  on  carrying  out  the  archi- 
tect's scheme  and  on  the  dainty  furniture  from  Paris;  and 
the  Aigues  received  that  final  touch  which  stamped  it  as 
unique — a  monument  to  the  tastes  of  four  different  centuries. 

In  1821  the  General  was  almost  summoned  by  Sibilet  before 
the  month  of  May.  Weighty  matters  were  at  stake.  The 
nine  years'  lease  of  the  woods  to  a  timber  merchant,  con- 


THE  PEASANTRY  121 

eluded  by  Gaubertin  in  1812  at  thirty  thousand  francs,  ex- 
pired on  May  15th  of  that  year.  So,  at  first,  Sibilet  would 
not  meddle  in  the  matter  of  renewing  the  lease ;  he  was  jeal- 
ous of  his  reputation  for  honesty.  "You  know,  M.  le  Comte," 
he  wrote,  "that  I  have  no  finger  in  that  pie."  But  the  timber 
merchant  wanted  the  indemnity  which  he  had  shared  with 
Gaubertin,  an  exaction  to  which  Mile.  Laguerre  had  sub- 
mitted in  her  dislike  of  lawsuits.  The  excuse  for  the  in- 
demnity was  based  on  the  depredations  of  the  peasantry,  who 
behaved  as  if  they  had  an  established  right  to  cut  wood  for 
fuel  in  the  forest.  Messrs.  Gravelot  Brothers,  the  timber 
merchants  in  Paris,  declined  to  pay  for  the  last  quarter,  and 
offered  to  bring  experts  to  prove  that  the  woods  had  fallen  off 
one-fifth  in  their  annual  value;  they  argued  from  the  bad 
precedent  established  by  Mile.  Laguerre. 

"I  have  already  summoned  these  gentlemen  to  appear  in 
the  Court  at  Ville-aux-Fayes,"  so  Sibilet's  letter  ran,  "for 
on  account  of  this  lease,  they  have  appointed  their  domicile 
with  my  old  employer,  Maitre  Corbinet.  I  am  afraid  we  shall 
lose  the  day." 

"Here  is  a  matter  in  which  our  income  is  involved,  fair 
lady,"  said  the  General,  showing  the  letter  to  his  wife ;  "do  you 
mind  going  sooner  than  last  year  to  the  Aigues  ?" 

"Do  you  go,  and  I  will  come  down  as  soon  as  the  summer 
begins,"  said  the  Countess,  rather  pleased  with  the  prospect 
of  staying  behind  in  Paris  by  herself. 

So  the  General  set  out  alone.  He  was  fully  determined  to 
take  strong  measures,  for  he  knew  the  treacherous  disease 
which  was  eating  into  the  best  of  his  revenues ;  but,  as  remains 
to  be  seen,  the  General  reckoned  without  his  Gaubertin. 

VIII 

THE  GREAT  REVOLUTIONS  OP  A  LITTLE  VALLEY 

"WELL,  now,  Lawyer  Sibilet,"  began  the  General  on  the  morn- 
ing after  his  arrival,  addressing  his  steward  by  a  familiar 


122  THE   PEASANTRY 

nickname,  which  showed  how  much  he  appreciated  the  legal 
knowledge  of  the  quondam  notary's  clerk.  "Well,  Lawyer 
Sibilet,  and  so,  in  Ministerial  language,  we  are  'passing 
through  a  crisis,'  are  we?" 

"Yes,  M.  le  Comte,"  replied  Sibilet,  following  in  the  Gen- 
eral's wake. 

The  happy  proprietor  of  the  Aigues  was  walking  up  and 
down  before  his  steward's  house,  in  a  space  where  Mme.  Sibi- 
let's  flowers  were  growing  on  the  edge  of  the  wide  stretch 
of  grass  watered  by  the  broad  channel  spoken  of  in  Blondet's 
letter.  The  Aigues  itself  lay  in  full  view  of  the  garden,  even 
as  from  the  chateau  you  saw  the  steward's  house,  which  had 
been,  built  for  the  sake  of  its  effed;  in  the  landscape. 

"But  where  is  the  difficulty?"  pursued  the  General.  "I 
shall  go  through  with  the  Gravelots'  case;  a  wound  in  the 
purse  is  not  mortal.  And  I  will  have  the  contract  well  ad- 
vertised; we  shall  soon  find  out  the  real  value  of  the  lease 
by  comparing  the  bids  of  the  competitors." 

"Things  will  not  go  off  that  way,  M.  le  Comte,"  Sibilet  an- 
swered. "If  you  have  no  offers,  what  will  you  do  then  ?" 

"Fell  my  timber,  and  sell  it  myself." 

"You  turn  timber  merchant !"  cried  Sibilet,  and  saw  that 
the  General  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "I  am  quite  willing. 
Let  us  say  no  more  about  your  affairs  here.  Let  us  look  at 
Paris.  You  would  have  to  take  a  timber-yard  on  lease  there, 
take  out  a  license,  pay  taxes,  pay  lighterage,  city  dues,  wharf- 
ingers and  workmen,  in  short,  you  must  have  a  responsible 
agent " 

"Quite  out  of  the  question !"  the  General  hastily  broke  in 
in  alarm.  "But  why  should  I  have  no  bidders?" 

"M.  le  Comte,  you  have  enemies  in  the  place." 

"And  who  are  they?" 

"M.  Gaubertin,  first  and  foremost " 

"Oh !     Is  that  the  scamp  who  was  here  before  your  time?" 

"Not  so  loud,  M.  le  Comte!"  entreated  Sibilet  in  terror; 
"for  pity's  sake,  do  not  speak  so  loud !  My  servant  girl  may 
overhear " 


THE  PEASANTRY  123 

"What !"  returned  the  General,  "cannot  I  talk  on  my  own 
property  of  a  scoundrel  who  robbed  me?" 

"If  you  value  a  quiet  life,  M.  le  Comte,  come  further  away ! 
.  .  .  Now;  M.  Gaubertin  is  mayor  of  Ville-aux-Fayes." 

"Aha !  I  wish  Ville-aux-Fayes  joy  of  him  with  all  my  heart. 
Thunder  of  heaven !  He  is  a  nice  mayor  for  a  place  ! " 

"Do  me  the  honor  of  listening  to  me,  M.  le  Comte,  and, 
believe  me,  we  have  a  most  serious  matter  in  hand,  the  ques- 
tion of  your  future  here." 

"I  am  listening.    Let  us  sit  down  on  this  bench." 

"When  you  dismissed  Gaubertin,  M.  le  Comte,  he  had 
to  do  something,  for  he  was  not  rich " 

"Not  rich !  and  he  was  helping  himself  here  to  twenty  thou- 
sand francs  a  year !" 

"M.  le  Comte,  I  am  not  setting  out  to  justify  his  conduct," 
.Sibilet  resumed.  "I  should  like  to  see  the  Aigues  prosper, 
if  it  were  only  to  establish  the  fact  of  Gaubertin's  dishonesty ; 
but  we  must  not  abuse  him,  he  is  the  most  dangerous  rascal 
in  all  Burgundy,  and  he  is  in  a  position  to  do  you  a  mischief." 

"How?"  asked  the  General,  grown  thoughtful. 

"Gaubertin,  such  as  you  see  him,  is  the  general  agent  of 
the  wood  merchants,  and  controls  one-third  of  the  Paris  tim- 
ber trade;  he  directs  the  whole  business  in  wood — the 
growth,  felling,  storage,  canal-transport,  and  salvage.  He 
is  a  constant  employer  of  labor,  and  can  dictate  his  own  terms. 
It  has  taken  him  three  years  to  make  this  position,  but  he  has 
fortified  himself  in  it  by  now ;  he  is  the  man  of  all  the  timber 
merchants,  and  he  treats  them  all  alike.  He  has  the  whole 
thing  cut  and  dried  for  their  benefit;  their  business  is  done 
more  smoothly  and  with  less  working  expense  than  if  each 
man  employed  a  separate  agent,  as  they  used  to  do.  For  one 
thing,  he  has  weeded  out  competition  so  thoroughly  that 
he  has  a  monopoly  of  contracts  for  timber,  and  the'  Crown 
forests  are  his  preserves.  The  right  of  cutting  timber  in  the 
Crown  forests  is  put  up  periodically  to  auction,  but  practically 
it  is  in  the  hands  of  Gaubertin's  clique  of  timber  merchants, 

for  by  this  time  nobody  is  big  enough  to  bid  against  them. 
VOL.  10 — 34 


124  THE  PEASANTRY 

Last  year  M.  Mariotte  of  Auxerre,  egged  on  by  the  Crown 
ranger,  tried  to  outbid  Gaubertin.  Gaubertin  let  him  have 
the  trees  at  the  ordinary  price  to  begin  with;  then  when  it 
came  to  felling  the  woods  the  local  wood-cutters  wanted  such 
wages  that  M.  Mariotte  had  to  send  over  to  Auxerre  for  men, 
and  when  they  came  the  Ville-aux-Fayes  men  set  upon  them. 
Then  the  ringleader  of  the  union  men  and  the  leader  of  the 
brawl  got  into  the  police  court.  The  proceedings  cost  money, 
and  M.  Mariotte  had  to  pay  all  the  costs,  for  the  men  had 
not  a  brass  farthing.  And  let  me  tell  you  this,  by  the  by 
(for  you  will  have  all  the  poor  in  the  canton  set  against  you) 
— you  take  nothing  by  taking  the  law  of  poor  folk  except  ill- 
will,  if  you  happen  to  live  among  them. 

"And  that  was  not  the  end  of  it.  When  poor  old  Mariotto 
(a  decent  soul)  came  to  reckon  it  all  over,  he  was  out  of 
pocket  by  the  contract.  He  had  to  pay  money  down  for  every- 
thing, and  to  sell  for  credit ;  Gaubertin  delivered  timber  at 
unheard-of  prices  to  ruin  his  competitor;  he  actually  gave  it 
away  at  five  per  cent  below  cost  price,  and  poor  old  Mariotte's 
credit  was  badly  shaken.  In  fact,  Gaubertin  is  still  after  him 
at  this  day,  and  pesters  him  to  that  degree,  that  he  is  going  to 
leave  not  merely  Auxerre,  they  say,  but  the  department  too, 
and  he  is  doing  wisely.  So,  at  one  blow,  the  growers  were 
sacrificed  for  a  long  time  to  come  to  the  timber  merchants, 
who  settle  the  prices  among  themselves,  like  brokers  and  fur- 
niture dealers  in  the  Paris  Sale  Rooms.  But  Gaubertin  saves 
the  growers  so  much  bother,  that  it  is  worth  their  while  to 
employ  him." 

"And  how  so  ?"  asked  the  General. 

"In  the  first  place,"  said  Sibilet,  "anything  that  simplifies 
business  is  sooner  or  later  to  the  interest  of  all  concerned. 
Then  the  owners  of  forests  are  sure  of  their  money.  That  is 
the  great  thing,  as  you  will  find  out,  in  all  sales  of  produce. 
And,  lastly,  M.  Gaubertin  is  like  a  father  to  the  laborers; 
he  pays  them  good  wages,  and  finds  them  constant  work ;  and 
as  the  wood-cutters'  families  live  in  the  neighborhood,  there 
is  no  damage  done  to  the  woods  which  belong  to  Gaubertin's 


THE  PEASANTRY  125 

timber  merchants,  or  on  the  estates  of  Messieurs  de  Soulanges 
and  de  Konquerolles  and  others  who  confide  .their  interests 
to  him.  The  peasants  pick  up  the  dead  wood,  and  that  is  all." 

"That  rogue  Gaubertin  has  not  wasted  his  time !"  cried  the 
General. 

"Oh  !  he  is  a  sharp  man !"  said  Sibilet.  "He  is,  as  he  puts 
it,  steward  of  the  best  half  of  the  department  now,  instead 
of  steward  of  the  Aigues.  He  charges  every  one  a  trifling 
percentage,  but  that  mere  trifle  on  a  couple  of  million  francs 
brings  him  forty  or  fifty  thousand  francs  a  year.  'The 
hearths  of  Paris  pay  for  all,'  says  he.  That  is  your  enemy, 
M.  le  Comte.  So  my  advice  to  you  is  to  come  to  terms  with 
him.  He  is  hand  and  glove,  as  you  know,  with  Soudry,  the 
police  sergeant  at  Soulanges,  arid  with  M.  Eigou,  our  mayor 
at  Blangy;  the  rural  police  are  his  tools,  so  that  it  will  be 
hard  to  put  down  the  pilfering  which  is  eating  you  up.  Your 
woods  have  been  ruined,  more  particularly  during  the  last 
two  years ;  so  Messieurs  Gravelot  have  a  chance  in  their  favor, 
for  they  say  that,  'by  the  terms  of  the  lease,  you  were  to  pay 
the  expenses  of  protecting  your  property;  you  are  not  pro- 
tecting it,  so  you  are  doing  us  an  injury,  and  you  must  make 
good  our  damages.'  Which  is  fair  enough,  but  it  is  no  reason 
why  they  should  gain  the  day." 

"You  must  resign  yourself  to  a  lawsuit  and  to  a  loss  of 
money  over  it  to  prevent  other  lawsuits  in  future,"  said  the 
General. 

"You  will  delight  Gaubertin,"  retorted  Sibilet. 

"How?" 

"If  you  go  to  law  with  the  Gravelots,  you  will  measure 
yourself  man  to  man  with  Gaubertin,  who  represents  them; 
he  would  like  nothing  so  much  as  that  lawsuit.  As  he  says, 
he  flatters  himself  that  he  will  trail  you  on  to  the  Court  of 
Appeal." 

"Ah !  the  scoundrel !  the " 

"Then  if  you  fell  and  sell  your  own  timber,"  pursued  Sibi- 
let, turning  the  dagger  in  the  wound,  "you  will  be  in  the 
hands  of  the  laborers,  who  will  ask  you  'fancy  prices/  instead 


126  THE  PEASANTRY 

of  'trade  wages ;'  they  will  'overweight'  you,  which  means  that 
they  will  put  you  in  such  a  position  that,  like  poor  old  Mari- 
otte,  you  will  have  to  sell  at  a  loss.  If  you  try  to  find  a  lessee, 
no  one  will  make  you  an  offer,  for  it  stands  to  reason  that 
no  one  will  run  the  risk  for  a  private  estate  that  Mariotte 
ran  for  the  Crown  forest. — Moreover,  suppose  that  the  old 
man  goes  to  complain  about  his  losses  to  the  Department. 
There  is  an  official  there,  much  such  a  man  as  your  humble 
servant  used  to  be  in  his  assessor  days,  a  worthy  gentleman 
in  a  threadbare  coat,  who  sits  and  reads  a  newspaper  at  a 
table.  He  is  neither  more  nor  less  soft-hearted,  whether  they 
pay  him  twelve  hundred  or  twelve  thousand  francs.  Talk 
to  the  Inland  Eevenue  Department,  in  the  person  of  this 
gentleman,  of  allowances  and  reductions !  He  will  answer 
you,  'Fiddle-de-dee!'  while  he  cuts  his  pen.  You  are  an 
outlaw,  M.  le  Comte." 

"What  is  to  be  done  ?"  cried  the  General.  His  blood  boiled ; 
he  strode  up  and  down  before  the  bench. 

"M.  le  Comte,"  said  Sibilet  with  brutal  frankness,  "what 
I  am  about  to  say  is  not  in  my  own  interests — you  should 
sell  the  Aigues  and  leave  the  neighborhood." 

At  these  words  the  General  started  back  as  if  a  bullet  had 
struck  him.  He  looked  at  Sibilet  with  a  diplomatic  expres- 
sion. 

"Is  a  General  of  the  Imperial  Guard  to  run  away  from  such 
rogues ;  and  after  Mme.  la  Comtesse  has  taken  a  liking  to  the 
Aigues?  Before  I  would  do  that  I  would  force  Gaubertin 
to  fight  me,  give  him  a  box  on  the  ears  in  the  market-place 
of  Ville-aux-Fayes,  and  kill  him  like  a  dog." 

"Gaubertin  is  not  such  a  fool  as  to  come  into  collision  with 
you.  And  besides,  so  important  a  person  as  the  mayor  of 
Ville-aux-Fayes  cannot  be  insulted  with  impunity." 

"I  will  make  a  beggar  of  him ;  the  Troisvilles  will  back  me 
up ;  my  income  is  involved." 

"You  will  not  succeed  in  that,  M.  le  Comte ;  Gaubertin  has 
very  long  arms.  You  would  only  put  yourself  in  an  awkward 
predicament  with  no  possible  way  out " 


THE  PEASANTRY  127 

*And  how  about  this  lawsuit?"  said  the  General.  "We 
must  think  of  the  present." 

"M.  le  Comte,  I  will  insure  that  you  shall  gain  it,"  said 
Sibilet,  with  something  knowing  in  his  air. 

"Well  done,  Sibilet !"  said  the  General,  gripping  the  stew- 
ard's hand.  "And  how?" 

"You  would  gain  the  day  in  the  Court  of  Appeal  in  the 
ordinary  course  of  events.  In  my  opinion,  the  Gravelots  are 
in  the  right,  but  that  is  not  enough,  the  case  is  not  decided 
upon  its  merits ;  you  must  be  technically  in  the  right  as  well. 
The  Gravelots  have  not  observed  the  proper  formalities,  and 
a  case  always  turns  upon  a  question  of  that  kind.  The 
Gravelots  ought  to  have  given  you  notice  to  look  after  your 
woods  better.  Then  you  cannot  come  down  upon  people  for 
allowances  extending  over  a  period  of  nine  years  at  the  ex- 
piration of  a  lease;  there  is  a  guarding  clause  inserted  in 
the  lease  to  prevent  that.  You  will  lose  your  case  at  Ville- 
aux-Fayes ;  perhaps  you  will  lose  it  again  in  the  higher  court, 
but  you  will  gain  the  day  in  Paris.  You  will  be  put  to  ruin- 
ous expense ;  there  will  be  valuations  which  will  cost  a  great 
deal.  If  you  gain  the  case,  you  will  spend  twelve  or  fifteen 
thousand  francs  at  least  over  it;  but  you  will  gain  the  day 
if  you  are  bent  upon  so  doing.  The  lawsuit  will  not  mend 
matters  with  the  Gravelots ;  it  will  cost  them  even  more.  You 
will  be  a  bugbear  to  them,  you  will  get  a  name  for  being  liti- 
gious, you  will  be  slandered,  but  you  will  gain  the  day 

"What  is  to  be  done?"  repeated  the  General.  If  Sibilet's 
remarks  had  touched  upon  the  most  heart-burning  questions, 
they  could  not  have  produced  more  effect  on  Montcornet.  He 
bethought  himself  of  that  thrashing  administered  to  Gau- 
bertin,  and  heartily  wished  that  he  had  laid  the  horsewhip 
about  his  own  shoulders.  He  turned  a  face  on  fire  to  Sibilet, 
who  could  read  all  his  torments  plainly  there. 

"What  is  to  be  done,  M.  le  Comte?"  echoed  the  other. 
"There  is  only  one  thing  to  be  done.  Compound  with  the 
Gravelots,  but  you  cannot  do  it  in  person.  I  must  act  as  if 
I  were  robbing  you.  Now,  when  all  our  comfort  and  ail  our 


128  THE  PEASANTRY 

prospects  lie  in  our  integrity,  it  is  rather  hard  for  us  poor 
devils  to  submit  to  appear  dishonest.  We  are  always  judged 
by  appearances.  Gaubertin,  in  his  time,  saved  Mile.  La- 
guerre's  life,  and  he  to  all  appearance  robbed  her;  but  she 
rewarded  him  for  his  devotion  by  putting  him  down  in  her 
will  for  a  jewel  worth  ten  thousand  francs,  which  Mine.  Gau- 
bertin wears  on  her  forehead  at  this  day." 

The  General  gave  Sibilet  a  second  glance,  at  least  as  diplo- 
matic as  the  first,  but  the  steward  did  not  seem  to  feel  the  sus- 
picion lurking  beneath  smiling  good  nature. 

"My  dishonesty  will  put  M.  Gaubertin  in  such  high  good 
humor  that  I  shall  gain  his  goodwill,"  continued  Sibilet.  "He 
will  listen  with  all  his  ears,  too,  when  I  come  to  lay  this  be- 
fore him — 'I  can  get  twenty  thousand  francs  out  of  the  Count 
for  the  Gravelots,  provided  that  they  will  go  halves  with  me/ 
If  your  opponents  consent  to  that,  I  will  bring  you  back  the 
ten  thousand  francs.  You  only  lose  ten  thousand,  you  save 
appearances,  and  there  is  an  end  of  the  lawsuit." 

"You  are  a  good  fellow,  Sibilet,"  said  the  General,  grasping 
the  steward's  hand.  "If  you  can  arrange  for  the  future  as 
well  as  for  the  present,  I  consider  that  you  are  a  jewel  of  a 
land-steward 

"As  to  the  future,  you  will  not  starve  if  the  wood  is  not 
felled  for  the  next  two  or  three  years.  Begin  by  looking  after 
your  woods.  Between  then  and  now  a  good  deal  of  water  will 
have  flowed  down  the  Avonne,  Ganbertin  may  die,  or  he  may 
have  made  enough  to  retire  upon.  In  short,  you  will  have 
time  to  find  a  competitor;  the  loaf  is  big  enough  to  divide; 
you  will  find  another  Gaubertin  to  match  him." 

"Sibilet,"  said  the  old  warrior,  amazed  at  the  variety  of 
solutions,  "I  will  give  you  a  thousand  crowns  if  you  bring  the 
matter  to  an  end  in  this  way;  and  then  we  will  think  things 
over." 

"Look  after  your  woods  before  all  things,  M.  le  Comte. 
Go  and  see  for  yourself  what  the  peasants  have  done  there 
during  the  two  years  while  you  have  been  away.  What  could 
I  do?  I  am  a  steward,  not  a  keeper.  You  want  three  for- 
esters and  a  mounted  patrol  to  look  after  the  Aigues." 


THE  PEASANTRY  129 

"We  will  defend  ourselves.  If  war  it  is  to  be,  we  will  fight. 
That  does  not  frighten  me,"  said  Montcornet,  rubbing  his 
hands. 

"It  is  a  money  war/'  said  Sibilet,  "and  that  will  seem 
harder  to  you  than  the  other  kind.  You  can  kill  men,  but 
there  is  no  killing  men's  interests.  You  will  fight  it  out  on 
a  battlefield  where  all  landowners'  must  fight — called  realiza- 
tion. It  is  nothing  to  grow  this  and  that ;  you  must  sell  your 
produce;  and  if  you  mean  to  sell  it,  you  must  keep  on  good 
terms  with  everybody." 

"I  shall  have  the  country  people  on  my  side." 

"How  so  ?"  queried  Sibilet. 

"By  treating  them  kindly." 

"Treat  the  peasants  kindly  and  the  townspeople  at  Sou- 
langes  !"  cried  Sibilet,  squinting  hideously,  for  one  eye  seemed 
to  gleam  more  than  the  other  with  the  irony  in  his  words. 
"You  do  not  know,  sir,  what  you  are  setting  about.  Our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ  would  be  crucified  there  a  second  time.  If  you 
want  a  quiet  life,  M.  le  Comte,  do  as  the  late  Mile.  Laguerre 
did — and  let  them  rob  you,  or  else  strike  terror  into  them. 
The  people,  women  and  children,  are  all  governed  in  the  same 
way — by  terror.  That  was  the  grand  secret  of  the  Convention 
and  of  the  Emperor." 

"Oh,  come  now !  have  we  fallen  among  thieves  here  ?"  cried 
Montcornet. 

Adeline  came  out  to  them. 

"Your  breakfast  is  waiting,  dear,"  she  said  to  Sibilet. — "I 
beg  your  pardon,  M.  le  Comte,  but  he  has  had  nothing  this 
morning,  and  he  has  been  as  far  as  Eonquerolles  with  some 
corn." 

"Go,  by  all  means,  Sibilet." 

Montcornet  was  up  and  out  before  day  next  morning.  He 
chose  to  return  by  the  Avonne  gate  to  have  a  chat  with  his 
one  forester,  and  to  sound  the  man's  disposition. 

Some  seven  or  eight  acres  of  forest  lay  beside  the  Avonne; 
a  fringe  of  tall  forest  trees  had  been  left  along  the  bank  on 


130  THE  PEASANTRY 

either  side,  that  a  river  which  flowed  almost  in  a  straight  line 
foi  three  leagues  might  preserve  its  stately  character. 

The  Aigues  had  once  belonged  to  a  mistress  of  Henri  IV., 
who  loved  the  chase  as  passionately  as  the  Bearnais.  It  was 
she  who  built,  in  1793,  the  steep,  single-span  bridge  over  the 
Avonne  to  cross  over  to  the  much  larger  forest  purchased  for 
her  on  the  other  side  of  the*  river.  The  Avonne  gate  had  been 
built  at  the  same  time  as  a  rendezvous  for  the  hunt,  and  every 
one  knows  that  architects  in  those  times  lavished  all  magnifi- 
cence upon  edifices  reared  for  this  greatest  pleasure  of  kings 
and  princes.  Six  avenues  met  before  it  in  a  semicircular 
space,  and  in  the  centre  of  the  crescent  rose  an  obelisk  sur- 
mounted by  a  sun  once  gilded,  with  the  arms  of  Navarre  on 
the  one  side,  and  those  of  the  Comtesse  de  Moret  on  the 
other. 

A  corresponding  crescent-shaped  space  by  the  Avonne  com- 
municated with  the  first  by  a  broad,  straight  walk,  whence 
you  saw  the  angular  crown  of  the  Venetian-looking  bridge. 
Between  two  handsome  iron  railings  (resembling  the  mag- 
nificent ironwork  which  used  to  surround  the  Jardin  de  la 
Place  Koyale  in  Paris,  now,  alas!  destroyed)  stood  a  hunting- 
lodge  built  of  brick,  with  stone  string  courses  of  the  same 
depressed-pyramid  pattern  as  at  the  chateau,  stone  facings 
likewise  ornamented,  and  a  high-pitched  roof. 

This  bygone  style,  that  gave  the  house  the  look  of  a  royal 
hunting-lodge,  is  only  suitable  in  towns  for  prisons,  but  here 
the  background  of  forest  trees  set  off  its  peculiarly  grandiose 
character.  The  kennels,  pheasant-houses,  and  the  old  quar- 
ters of  falconers  and  prickers  were  screened  by  a  blind  wall. 
The  place  had  once  been  the  pride  of  Burgundy;  row  it  lay 
almost  in  ruins. 

In  1595  a  royal  train  set  out  from  that  princely  hunting- 
lodge,  preceded  by  the  great  hounds  beloved  of  Eubens  and 
Paul  Veronese;  the  horses  that  pawed  the  ground  are  now 
only  seen  in  Wouvermans'  wonderful  pictures — mighty  white 
beasts  with  a  bluish  shade  on  the  heavy  plo^y  hindquarters. 
After  these  followed  footmen  in  gorgeous  array,  and  the  fore- 


THE  PEASANTRY  131 

ground  was  enlivened  by  the  huntsmen  in  yellow  breeches 
and  high  topboots  who  fill  Van  de  Meulen's  great  canvases. 
The  stone  obelisk  was  reared  to  commemorate  that  day  when 
the  Bearnais  went  hunting  with  the  beautiful  Comtesse  de 
Moret,  and  bore  the  date  beneath  the  arms  of  Navarre. 
Navarre,  not  France ;  for  the  jealous  mistress,  whose  son  was 
declared  to  be  a  prince  of  the  blood,  could  not  endure  that  the 
arms  of  France  should  meet  her  eyes  to  reproach  her. 

But  in  1823,  when  the  General  saw  the  splendid  monument, 
the  roof  was  green  with  moss  on  every  side.  The  octagonal 
glass  panes  were  dropping  out  of  the  loosened  leads,  the  win- 
dows looked  half-blind.  The  stones  of  the  weather-worn 
string-courses  seemed  to  cry  out,  with  countless  gaping 
mouths,  against  such  desecration.  Yellow  wallflowers  blos- 
somed among  the  balusters;  the  ivy  stems  slipped  pale  down- 
covered  claws  into  every  cranny. 

Everything  spoke  of  a  mean  neglect.  Selfishness,  regard- 
less of  those  who  come  after  it,  leaves  its  stamp  on  all  its 
present  possessions.  Two -windows  above  were  stopped  up 
with  hay;  one  window  on  the  ground  floor  gave  a  glimpse  of 
a  room  full  of  tools  and  firewood,  and  a  cow's  muzzle  thrust 
from  another  informed  the  beholder  that,  to  save  himself 
the  trouble  of  going  to  and  fro  between  the  pheasant-house 
and  the  lodge,  Courtecuisse  had  made  a  cowhouse  of  the  great 
hall,  where  the  armorial  bearings  of  every  owner  of  the  Aigues 
were  painted  on  the  paneled  ceiling. 

The  whole  approach  to  the  house  was  disfigured  by  a  col- 
lection of  dirty  black  palings  marking  the  limits  of  pig-sties 
roofed  with  planks,  and  little  square  pens  for  poultry  and 
ducks.  Every  six  months  the  accumulated  filth  was  cleared 
away.  Sundry  rags  were  drying  on  the  brambles,  which  had 
thrust  themselves  up  here  and  there. 

As  the  General  came  up  the  avenue  from  the  bridge,  he 
saw  Courtecuisse's  wife  scouring  the  earthen  pipkin  in  which 
she  had  just  made  coffee.  The  keeper  himself  was  sitting  on 
a  chair  in  the  sun  looking  on,  much  as  a  savage  might  watch 


132  THE  PEASANTRY 

his  squaw.     He  turned  his  head  at  the  sound  of  footsteps, 
saw  the  Count  his  master,  and  looked  fooli-sli. 

"Well,  Courtecuisse,  my  boy,  I  don't  wonder  that  some  one 
else  cuts  down  my  wood  before  the  Messrs.  Gravelot  can  get 
it.  Do  you  take  your  place  for  a  sinecure  ?" 

"Upon  my  word,  M.  le  Comte,  I  have  been  out  in  your 
woods  for  so  many  nights  that  I  have  got  a  chill.  I  was  feel- 
ing so  bad  this  morning  that  my  wife  has  been  warming  a 
poultice  for  me ;  she  is  cleaning  the  pipkin  now/' 

"My  good  fellow,"  remarked  the  General,  "I  only  know  of 
one  complaint  which  needs  poulticing  with  hot  coffee,  and 
that  is  hunger.  Listen,  you  rogue !  Yesterday  I  went 
through  the  woods  belonging  to  Messrs,  de  Ronquerolles  and 
de  Soulanges,  and  then  through  my  own.  Theirs  are  properly 
looked  after,  and  mine  is  in  a  pitiable  state/' 

"Ah !  M.  le  Comte,  they  have  been  here  this  ever  so  long, 
they  have;  people  let  them  alone.  Would  you  have  me  fight 
with  half-a-dozen  communes?  I  value  my  life  even  more 
than  your  woods.  Any  man  who  tried  to  look  after  your 
woods  properly  would  get  a  bullet  .through  his  head  by  way  of 
wages  in  some  corner  of  the  forest/' 

"Coward!"  cried  the  General,  choking  down  the  wrath 
kindled  by  Courtecuisse's  insolence.  "It  has  been  a  splendid 
night,  but  it  has  cost  me  three  hundred  francs  at  this  mo- 
ment, and  a  thousand  francs  in  claims  for  damages  to  come. — 
Things  must  be  done  differently,  or  you  shall  go  out  of  this. 
All  past  offences  should  be  forgiven.  Here  are  my  condition- : 
you  shall  have  all  the  fines  and  three  francs  for  each  convic- 
tion. If  I  do  not  find  that  this  plan  pays  me  better,  you  shall 
go  about  your  business ;  while  if  you  serve  me  well,  and  man- 
age to  put  down  the  pilfering,  you  shall  have  a  hundred 
crowns  a  year.  Think  it  over.  Here  are  six  ways,"  he  went 
on,  pointing  to  the  alleys,  "like  me,  you  must  take  one;  I 
am  not  afraid  of  bullets.  Try  to  find  the  right  one." 

Courtecuisse,  forty-six  years  of  age,  a  short  man  with  a 
full-moon  countenance,  dearly  loved  to  do  nothing.  He  rerk- 
oned  upon  spending  the  rest  of  his  days  in  the  hunting  lodge 


THE  PEASANTEY  133 

— his  lodge.  His  two  cows  grazed  in  the  forest,  he  had  fuel 
for  his  needs;  he  worked  in  his  garden  instead  of  running 
about  after  delinquents.  His  neglect  of  his  duties  suited 
Gaubertin,  and  Courtecuisse  and  Gaubertin  understood  each 
other.  So  he  never  harassed  the  wood-stealers  except  to 
gratify  his  own  petty  hatreds.  He  persecuted  girls  who  would 
not  accede  to  his  wishes,  and  people  whom  he  disliked;  but 
it  was  a  long  while  now  since  he  had  borne  any  one  a  grudge, 
his  easy  ways  had  won  popularity  for  him. 

At  the  Grand-I-Vert  a  knife  and  fork  was  always  set  for 
Courtecuisse,  the  faggot-stealers  were  no  longer  recalcitrant. 
Both  he  and  his  wife  received  tribute  in  kind  from  the  ma- 
rauders. This  wood  was  stacked  for  him,  his  vines  were  lay- 
ered and  pruned.  He  had  vassals  and  tributaries  in  all  the 
delinquents,  in  fact. 

Almost  reassured  as  he  had  been  as  to  his  future  by  the 
words  that  Gaubertin  let  fall  about  those  two  acres  to  be  his 
when  the  Aigues  should  be  sold,  he  was  rudely  awakened  from 
his  dream  by  the  General's  dry  remarks.  After  four  years  he 
stood  revealed  at  last;  the  nature  of  the  bourgeois  had  come 
out ;  he  was  determined  to  be  cheated  no  longer.  Courtecuisse 
took  up  his  cap,  his  game-bag  and  gun,  put  on  his  gaiters, 
his  belt  stamped  with  the  brand-new  arms  of  Montcornet,  and 
went  forth  to  Yille-aux-Fayes,  with  the  careless  gait  which 
hides  the  countryman's  deepest  thoughts.  He  looked  along 
the  woods  as  he  went  and  whistled  to  his  dogs. 

"You  complain  of  the  Upholsterer,"  said  Gaubertin,  when 
Courtecuisse  had  told  his  tale ;  "why,  your  fortune  is  made ! 
What !  the  ninny  is  giving  you  three  francs  for  each  prose- 
cution and  all  the  fines  into  the  bargain,  is  he?  If  you  can 
come  to  an  understanding  with  your  friends,  he  can  have 
them,  and  as  many  as  he  likes.  Prosecutions !  let  them  have 
them  by  the  hundred.  When  you  have  a  thousand  francs, 
you  will  be  able  to  buy  the  Bachelerie,  Rigoii's  farm;  you 
can  be  your  own  master  and  work  on  your  own  land,  or  rather, 
you  can  live  at  ease  and  set  others  to  work.  Only,  mind  this, 
you  must  arrange  to  prosecute  nobody  but  those  who  are  as 


134      ,  THE  PEASANTRY 

poor  as  Job.  You  cannot  shear  those  that  have  no  wool.  Take 
the  Upholsterer's  offer;  let  him  pile  up  costs  for  himself  if 
lie  has  a  liking  for  them.  Tastes  differ,  and  it  takes  all  sorts 
to  make  a  world.  There  was  old  Mariotte,  in  spite  of  all  I 
could  say,  he  liked  losses  better  than  profits." 

Courtecuisse  went  home  again,  profoundly  impressed  by 
Gaubertin's  wisdom  and  consumed  with  a  desire  to  have  a  bit 
of  land  for  himself  and  to  be  a  master  like  the  rest  at  last. 

General  Montcornet  likewise  returned,  and  on  his  way  gave 
Sibilet  on  account  of  his  expedition. 

"Quite  right,  quite  right,  M.  le  Comte,"  said  the  steward, 
rubbing  his  hands,  "but  there  must  be  no  stopping  short  now 
you  are  on  the  right  track.  The  rural  policeman  who  allowed 
the  spoliation  to  go  on  in  our  fields  ought  to  be  changed.  It 
would  be  easy  for  M.  le  Comte  to  obtain  the  appointment  of 
mayor  of  the  commune,  and  to  put  some  one  else  in  Vau- 
doyer's  place — some  old  soldier  who  would  not  be  afraid  to 
carry  out  orders.  A  great  landowner  should  be  master  on  his 
own  property;  and  see  what  trouble  we  have  with  the  present 
mayor !" 

The  mayor  of  the  commune  of  Blangy,  one  Eigou,  had  been 
a  Benedictine  monk,  but  in  the  year  1  of  the  Kepublic  he 
had  married  the  servant-maid  of  the  late  cure  of  Blangy.  A 
married  monk  was  not  likely  to  find  much  favor  at  the  pre- 
fecture after  the  Eestoration,  but  there  was  no  one  else  to 
fill  his  post,  and  in  1815  Eigou  was  still  mayor  of  Blangy. 
In  1817,  however,  the  bishop  had  sent  the  Abbe  Brossette  to 
act  as  officiating  priest  of  the  parish.  Blangy  had  done  with- 
out a  priest  for  twenty-five  years,  and,  not  unnaturally,  a  vio- 
lent feud  broke  out  between  the  apostate  and  the  young 
churchman  whose  character  has  been  previously  sketched. 

People  had  looked  down  upon  Eigou,  but  the  war  between 
the  mayor  and  the  parson  brought  the  former  popularity. 
Eigou  had  Been  hated  by  the  peasants  for  his  usurious 
schemes,  but  now  he  was  suddenly  identified  with  their  inter- 
ests, political  and  financial,  which  were  threatened  (as  they 
imagined)  by  the  Eestoration  and  the  clergy. 


THE  PEASANTRY  135 

Socquard  of  the  Cafe  de  la  Paix  was  the  nominal  subscriber 
to  the  Constitutlonnel,  the  principal  Liberal  paper,  but  all  the 
local  functionaries  joined  in  the  subscription,  and  the  journal 
circulated  through  a  score  of  hands  after  it  left  the  Cafe  till, 
at  the  end  of  the  week,  it  came  to  Eigou,  who  passed  it  on  to 
Langlume,  the  miller,  who  gave  the  tattered  fragments  to 
any  one  who  could  read.  The  leading  articles,  written  for 
Paris,  and  the  anti-religious  canards,  were  seriously  read  and 
considered  in  the  valley  of  the  Aigues.  Kigou  became  a  hero 
after  the  pattern  of  the  "venerable"  Abbe  Gregoire;  and  as 
in  the  case  of  certain  Parisian  bankers,  the  purple  oloak  of 
popularity  served  to  hide  a  multitude  of  sins. 

At  this  particular  moment,  indeed,  Eigou,  the  perjured 
monk,  was  looked  upon  as  a  local  Frangois  Keller  and  a 
champion  of  the  people,  though  at  no  very  remote  period  he 
would  not  have  dared  to  walk  in  the  fields  after  dark  lest  he 
should  be  trapped  and  die  an  accidental  death.  Persecution 
for  political  opinion  has  such  virtue  that  not  merely  does  it 
increase  a  man's  present  importance,  but  it  restores  innocence 
to  his  past.  Liberalism  worked  many  miracles  of  this  kind. 
But  the  unlucky  paper,  which  had  the  wit  to  find  the  level  of 
its  readers  in  those  days,  and  to  be  as  dull,  scandalous,  gulli- 
ble and  besottedly  disloyal  as  the  ordinary  public,  of  which 
the  ordinary  rank  and  file  of  mankind  is  composed,  did,  it 
may  be,  as  much  damage  to  private  property  as  to  the  Church 
which  it  attacked. 

Eigou  flattered  himself  that  a  son  of  the  people,  reared  by 
the  Eevolution,  a  Bonapartist  general,  in  disgrace  to  boot, 
would  be  a  sworn  enemy  of  Bourbons  and  clericals.  But  the 
General  had  his  own  ideas,  and  had  managed  to  avoid  a  visit 
from  M.  and  Mme.  Eigou  when  he  first  came  to  the  Aigues. 

The  enormity  of  the  General's  blunder,  afterwards  made 
worse  by  a  piece  of  insolence  on  the  part  of  the  Countess  (the 
story  will  be  related  in  its  place)  can  only  be  recognized 
after  a  better  acquaintance  with  the  terrible  figure  of  Eigou — 
the  vampire  of  the  valley. 

If  Montcornet  had  set  out  to  win  the  mayor's  goodwill, 


136  THE  PEASANTRY 

and  courted  his  friendship,  Kigou's  influence  might  have  neu- 
tralized Gaubertin's  power.  But  far  from  making  the  over- 
tures, Montcornet  had  brought  three  several  actions  against 
the  ex-monk  in  the  court  at  Ville-aux-Fa)'es ;  Rigou  had  al- 
ready gained  one  case,  but  the  other  two  were  still  in  suspense. 
Then  Montcornet's  mind  had  been  so  busy  over  schemes  for 
the  gratification  of  his  vanity,  so  full  of  his  marriage,  that  he 
had  forgotten  Rigou;  but  now  when  Sibilet  advised  him  to 
take  Rigou's  place  himself,  he  called  for  post-horses  and  went 
straight  to  the  prefect. 

The  General  and  the  prefect,  Count  Martial  de  la  Roche- 
Hugon,  had  been  friends  since  the  year  1804.  The  purchase 
of  the  Aigues  had  been  determined  by  a  hint  let  fall  in  Paris 
by  the  Councillor  of  State.  La  Roche-Hugon  had  been  a  pre- 
fect under  Napoleon,  and  remained  a  prefect  under  the  Bour- 
bons, paying  court  to  the  Bishop  so  as  to  keep  his  place.  Xow 
his  lordship  had  asked  for  Rigou's  removal  not  once  but  many 
times,  and  Martial,  who  knew  perfectly  well  how  matters 
stood  in  the  commune,  was  only  too  delighted  by  the  General's 
request.  In  a  month's  time,  Montcornet  was  mayor  of  Blangy. 

While  Montcornet  was  staying  with  his  friend  at  the  pre- 
fecture, it  happened  naturally  enough  that  one  Groison,  a 
subaltern  officer  of  the  old  Imperial  Guard,  came  thither 
about  his  pension,  which  had  been  stopped  on  some  pretext. 
The  General  had  once  already  done  the  man  a  service,  and, 
recollecting  this,  the  gallant  cavalry  officer  poured  out  the 
story  of  his  woes.  He  had  nothing  whatever.  Montcornet 
undertook  to  obtain  the  pension,  and  offered  Groison  the  post 
of  rural  policeman  at  Blangy,  and  a  way  at  the  same  time  of 
repaying  the  obligation  by  devotion  to  his  patron's  interests. 
So  the  new  mayor  and  the  new  rural  policeman  came  into 
office  together,  and,  as  may  be  imagined,  the  General  gave 
weighty  counsel  to  his  lieutenant. 

Vaudoyer,  whose  bread  was  thus  taken  out  of  his  mouth, 
vas  a  peasant  born  on  the  Ronquerolles  estate.  He  was  the 
ordinary  rural  policeman,  fit  for  nothing  but  to  dawdle  about 
and  to  make  use  of  his  position,  so  that  he  was  made  much  of 


THE  PEASANTRY  131 

and  cajoled  by  the  peasants,  who  ask  no  better  than  to  bribe 
subaltern  authority  and  outpost  sentinels  of  property.  Vau- 
doyer  knew  Soudry ;  for  a  police-sergeant  in  the  gendarmerie 
fulfils  quasi-judicial  functions,  and  the  rural  police  naturally 
act  as  detectives  if  required.  Soudry  sent  his  man  to  Gau- 
bertin,  who  gave  a  warm  welcome  to  an  old  acquaintance,  and 
the  pair  discussed  Vaudoyer's  wrongs  over  a  friendly  glass. 
•  "My  dear  fellow,"  said  the  mayor  of  Ville-aux-Fayes,  who 
could  suit  himself  to  his  company,  ''the  thing  that  has  hap- 
pened to  you  is  in  store  for  us  ail.  The  nobles  have  come 
back  again,  and  the  Emperor's  nobles  are  making  common 
cause  with  them.  They  mean  to  grind  the  people  down,  to 
establish  the  old  customs  and  to  take  away  our  property;  but 
we  are  Burgundians,  we  must  defend  ourselves  and  send  those 
Arminacs  back  to  Paris.  You  go  back  to  Blangy;  you  can 
be  watchman  there  for  M.  Polissard.  who  has  taken  the  lease 
of  the  Eonquerolles  woods.  Never  mind,  ray  lad,  I  will  find 
you  plenty  of  work  all  the  year  round.  But  there  is  to  be 
no  trespassing  there,  mind  you;  the  woods  belong  to  us,  and 
that  would  spoil  it  all.  Send  on  all  'wood-cutters'  to  the 
Aigues.  And  lastly,  if  there  is  any  sale  for  faggots,  te)]  the 
people  to  buy  of  us  and  not  of  the  Aigues.  You  will  be  rural 
policeman  again;  this  won't  last  long.  The  General  will 
soon  be  sick  of  living  among  thieves.  Did  you  know  that 
yonder  Upholsterer  called  me  a  thief  ?  And  I  the  son  of  one 
of  the  most  honest  Republicans !  and  the  son-in-law  of 
Mouchon,  the  famous  representative  of  the  people,  who  died 
without  leaving  a  penny  to  pay  for  his  funeral !" 

The  General  raised  his  rural  policeman's  salafy  to  three 
hundred  francs  a  year.  He  had  a  mairie  built  in  Blangy,  and 
installed  Groison  in  the  premises.  Then  he  found  a  wife  foi 
that  functionary  in  the  orphan  daughter  of  one  of  his  own 
little  tenants  who  owned  three  acres  of  vineyard.  Groison 
felt  a  doglike  affection  for  his  master.  His  fidelity  was  ad- 
mitted on  all  sides,  and  Groison  was  feared  and  respected, 
but  much  as  an  unpopular  captain  is  respected  and  feared 


138  THE  PEASANTRY 

by  his  crew.  The  peasantry  shunned  him  as  if  he  had  been 
a  leper.  They  were  silent  when  he  came  among  them,  or 
they  disguised  their  dislike  under  an  appearance  of  banter. 
Against  such  numbers  he  was  powerless. 

The  delinquents  amused  themselves  by  inventing  misde- 
meanors of  which  no  cognizance  could  be  taken,  and  the  old 
warrior  chafed  at  his  impotence.  For  Groison  his  functions 
united  the  attractions  of  guerilla  warfare  with  the  pleasures 
of  the  chase.  He  hunted  down  offenders.  But  war  had  in- 
stilled into  him  the  sportsmanlike  instinct  of  acting  openly 
and  above-board,  as  it  were,  and  he  loathed  the  underhand 
schemings  and  thievish  dexterity  which  caused  him  continual 
mortification.  He  very  soon  found  out  that  the  property  of 
other  landlords  was  respected,  that  it  was  only  at  the 
Aigues  that  this  pilfering  went  on,  and  he  felt  sincere  con- 
tempt for  a  peasantry  ungrateful  enough  to  rob  a  general  of 
the  Empire,  a  man  so  essentially  kind-hearted  and  generous. 
Hate  was  soon  added  to  contempt.  But  in  vain  did  he  try  to 
be  omnipresent ;  he  could  not  be  everywhere  at  once ;  and  the 
delinquencies  went  on  all  over  the  woods  at  the  same  time. 
Groison  made  it  plain  to  the  General  that  he  must  organize 
a  complete  system  of  defence;  his  utmost  zeal,  he  said,  was 
insufficient  to  cope  with  the  ill-will  of  the  population  of  the 
valley,  and  he  revealed  its  extent. 

"There  is  something  behind  this,  General,"  he  said ;  "these 
people  are  too  bold,  they  are  afraid  of  nothing;  it  is  as  if  they 
reckoned  on  Providence." 

"We  shall  see,"  said  the  Count. 

Unlucky  words !  A  great  statesman  does  not  conjugate  the 
verb  "to  see"  in  the  future  tense. 

At  that  time  Montcornet  had  something  else  on  his  mind, 
a  difficulty  more  pressing,  as  it  seemed  to  him.  He  must  find 
an  alter  ego  to  take  his  place  as  mayor  while  he  was  absent 
in  Paris,  and  a  mayor  must  of  necessity  be  able  to  read  and 
write.  Looking  over  the  whole  commune,  he  found  but  one 
man  to  answer  this  description — this  was  Langlume,  the 
miller.  He  could  not  well  have  made  a  worse  choice. 


THE  PEASANTRY  139 

In  the  first  place,  the  interests  of  the  General-mayor  and 
ihe  miller-deputy-mayor  were  diametrically  opposed;  and  in 
the  second,  Langlume  was  mixed  up  in  several  shady  transac- 
tions with  Eigou,  who  lent  him  money  in  the  way  of  busi- 
ness. The  miller  used  to  buy  the  right  of  pasture  for  his 
horses  in  the  fields ;  thanks  to  his  machinations  indeed  he  had 
a  monopoly,  for  Sibilet  could  not  find  another  purchaser.  All 
the  grazing  land  in  the  valley  commanded  good  prices,  but 
the  fields  at  the  Aigues,  the  best  land  of  all,  was  left  to  the 
last  and  fetched  the  least. 

So  Langlume  was  appointed  deputy-mayor  for  the  time 
being,  but  in  France  "for  the  time  being"  practically  means 
"once  for  all,"  though  Frenchmen  are  credited  with  a  love  of 
change.  Langlume,  counseled  by  Bigou,  feigned  devotion  to 
the  General's  interests,  and  became  deputy-mayor  about  the 
time  selected  by  the  omnipotent  chronicler  for  the  beginning 
of  the  drama. 

As  soon  as  the  new  mayor  had  turned  his  back,  Eigou,  who 
of  course  was  on  the  Council,  had  it  all  his  own  way  at  the 
Board,  and  the  resolutions  which  he  passed  there  were  by 
no  means  in  the  General's  interest.  He  voted  money  for 
schemes  purely  for  the  benefit  of  the  peasants,  though  the 
Aigues  must  pay  most  of  the  rates,  and  indeed  paid  two-thirds 
of  the  taxes,  or  he  refused  grants  of  money  which  were  really 
needed  for  supplementing  the  Abbe's  stipend,  for  rebuilding 
the  parsonage,  or  wages  (sic)  for  a  schoolmaster. 

"If  the  peasants  knew  how  to  read  and  write,  what  would 
become  of  us?"  said  Langlume,  with  ingenuous  frankness. 
The  Abbe  Brossette  had  tried  to  induce  a  brother  of  the  Order 
of  the  Doctrine  chretienne  to  come  to  Blangy,  and  the  miller 
was  endeavoring  to  justify  to  the  General  the  anti-Liberal 
course  taken  by  the  Council. 

The  General  returned  from  Paris,  and  so  delighted  was  he 
with  Groison's  behavior  that  he  began  to  look  up  old  soldiers 
of  the  Imperial  Guard.  He  meant  to  organize  his  defence 
of  the  Aigues  and  put  it  on  a  formidable  footing.  By  dint 
of  looking  about  him,  and  making  inquiries  among  his  frienda 

VOL.  10—  jj 


140  THE  PEASANTRY 

and  officers  on  half-pay,  he  unearthed  Michaud,  an  old  quar- 
termaster in  the  cuirassiers  of  the  Guard,  "a  tough  morsel," 
in  soldier's  language,  a  simile  suggested  by  camp  cookery, 
when  a  bean  here  and  there  resists  the  softening  influences 
of  the  boiling  pot.  Michaud  picked  out  three  of  his  acquaint- 
ances to  be  foresters,  without  fear  or  blame. 

The  first  of  these,  Steingel  by  name,  was  a  thorough  Alsa- 
tian, an  illegitimate  son  of  the  General.  Steingel  who  fell  dur- 
ing the  time  of  Bonaparte's  early  successes  in  Italy.  Steingel 
the  younger  was  tall  and  strong,  a  soldier  of  a  type  accus- 
tomed, like  the  Eussians,  to  complete  and  passive  obedience. 
Nothing  stopped  him  in  his  duty.  If  he  had  had  his  orders, 
he  would  have  laid  hands  coolly  on  Emperor  or  Pope.  He 
did  not  know  what  danger  meant.  He  had  served  in  the 
ranks  with  undaunted  courage  for  sixteen  years,  and  had 
never  received  a  scratch.  He  slept  out  of  doors  or  in  his 
bed  with  stoical  indifference;  and  at  any  aggravation  of  dis- 
comfort merely  remarked,  "That  is  how  things  are  to-day,  it 
seems !" 

Vatel,  the  second,  was  the  child  of  his  regiment ;  a  corporal 
of  light  infantry,  gay  as  a  lark,  a  trifle  light  with  the  fair  sex, 
utterly  devoid  of  religious  principle,  and  brave  to  the  verge 
of  rashness,  the  man  who  would  laugh  as  he  shot  down  a  com- 
rade. He  had  no  future  before  him,  no  idea  of  a  calling,  he 
saw  a  very  amusing  little  war  in  the  functions  proposed  to 
him;  and  as  the  Emperor  and  the  Grand  Army  were  his  sole 
articles  of  faith,  he  swore  to  serve  the  brave  Montcornet  if 
the  whole  world  were  against  him.  His  was  a  nature  essen- 
tially combative;  life  without  an  enemy  lost  all  its  savor  for 
him;  he  would  have  made  an  excellent  attorney;  he  was  a 
born  detective.  Indeed,  as  has  been  seen,  but  for  the  presence 
of  the  justice's  clerk,  he  would  have  haled  Granny  Tonsard, 
faggot  and  all,  out  of  the  Grand-I-Vert,  and  the  law  in  his 
person  would  have  violated  the  sanctuary  of  the  hearth. 

The  third,  one  Gaillard,  a  veteran  promoted  to  be  sub- 
lieutenant, and  covered  with  scars,  belonged  to  the  laboring 
class  of  soldiers.  Everything  seemed  to  him  to  be  alike  in- 


THE  PEASANTRY  141 

different  after  the  Emperor's  fate ;  but  his  indifference  would 
carry  him  as  far  as  Vatel's  enthusiasm.  He  had  a  natural 
daughter  to  suppport,  the  place  offered  him  a  means  of  sub- 
sistence, and  he  took  it  as  he  would  have  enlisted  in  a  regi- 
ment. 

When  the  General  went  to  the  Aigues  to  dismiss  Courte- 
cuisse  before  his  old  soldiers  eame,  he  was  amazed  beyond 
expression  at  the  man's  impudent  audacity.  There  are  ways 
of  obeying  an  order  which  supply  a  most  cuttingly  sarcastic 
commentary  upon  it,  on  the  part  of  the  slave  who  carries  it 
out  to  the  letter.  Every  relation  between  man  and  man  can 
be  reduced  to  an  absurdity,  and  Courtecuisse  had  overstepped 
the  limits  of  absurdity. 

One  hundred  and  twenty-six  summonses  had  been  taken 
out  at  the  tribunal  of  the  peace  at  Soulanges,  which  took 
cognizance  of  misdemeanors ;  and  almost  every  one  of  the  de- 
linquents had  an  understanding  with  Courtecuisse.  In  sixty- 
nine  cases  judgment  had  been  given,  and  duly  registered  and 
notices  served  upon  the  defendants.  Whereupon  Brunet,  de- 
lighted at  such  a  fine  windfall,  did  all  that  was  necessary  to 
arrive  at  the  dreary  point  beyond  which  the  arm  of  the  law 
cannot  reach,  whence  execution  warrants  return  bearing  the 
superscription  "Xo  effects,"  a  formula  by  which  the  sheriff's- 
officer  acquaints  you  with  the  fact  that  the  person  herein  de- 
scribed, being  in  the  direst  poverty,  is  already  stripped  bare 
of  all  possession,  and  where  there  is  nothing  to  be  had,  the 
creditor,  like  the  crown,  loses  his  rights — of  suing.  In  the 
present  instance  the  poverty-stricken  individuals  had  been 
selected  with  discernment.  They  lived  scattered  over  five 
communes  round  about ;  and  when  the  sheriff's-oflficer  and  his 
two  assistants,  Vermichel  and  Fourchon,  had  duly  gone  to 
find  each  one,  Brunet  returned  the  warrants  to  Sibilet  to- 
gether with  a  statement  of  costs  amounting  to  five  thousand 
francs,  and  an  intimation  that  he  awaited  the  Comte  de  Mont- 
cornet's  further  instructions. 

Provided  with  this  file  of  documents,  Sibilet  waited  on  his 
employer,  calmly  pointed  out  that  these  were  the  results  of  a 


142  THE  PEASANTRY 

too  summary  order  given  to  Courtecuisse,  and  was  looking  on, 
an  unconcerned  spectator  of  one  of  the  most  tremendous  ox- 
plosions  of  wrath  ever  seen  in  a  French  cavalry  officer,  when 
Courtecuisse  came  in  at  that  particular  moment  to  pay  his  re- 
spects and  to  ask  for  some  eleven  hundred  francs,  the  prom- 
ised bonus  on  these  unlucky  convictions.  Then  temper  fairly 
got  the  upper  hand  of  the  General.  He  forgot  his  rank  in  the 
army,  he  forgot  his  count's  coronet  and  became  a  plain 
trooper  again,  and  poured  out  a  torrent  of  insulting  invective 
of  which  he  would  feel  heartily  ashamed  a  little  later. 

"Oh  !  eleven  hundred  francs  ?"  cried  he.  "Eleven  hundred 
thousand  drubbings !  Eleven  hundred  thousand  kicks ! 
.  .  .  Do  you  suppose  that  I  am  not  up  to  your  games? 
.  .  .  Show  me  a  clean  pair  of  heels  or  I  will  break  every 
bone  in  your  skin !" 

At  the  sight  of  the  General  grown  purple  in  the  face,  at 
the  sound  of  the  first  word  he  uttered,  Courtecuisse  fled  away 
like  a  swallow. 

"M.  le  Comte,"  said  Sibilet,  in  the  mildest  accents,  "you 
are  wrong." 

"Wrong!     .     .     .    I?" 

"Good  gracious,  M.  le  Comte,  mind  what  you  are  about; 
that  rogue  will  prosecute  you " 

"I  do  not  care  a  rap.  .  .  .  Look  here !  that  scoundrel 
goes  this  very  moment.  See  that  he  takes  nothing  of  mine 
away  with  him,  and  pay  him  his  wages." 

Four  hours  later,  every  tongue  in  the  neighborhood  was 
wagging,  as  might  be  expected,  over  the  news.  It  was  said 
that  the  General  had  refused  to  pay  Courtecuisse's  wages, 
poor  fellow;  had  kept  two  thousand  francs  belonging  to  him, 
and  knocked  him  down. 

Queer  stories  began  to  circulate.  According  to  the  latest 
reports,  the  master  up  at  the  Aigues  had  gone  out  of  his  mind. 
Next  day  Brunet,  who  had  drawn  up  the  execution  warrants 
for  the  General,  served  him  with  a  summons  to  appear  before 
the  tribunal.  The  lion  had  many  fly-pricks  in  store  for  him, 
and  this  was  but  the  beginning  of  his  troubles. 


THE  PEASANTRY  143 

There  are  various  forms  to  be  gone  through  before  a  for- 
ester can  be  installed;  for  one  thing,  he  must  take  the  oath 
in  a  Court  of  First  Instance.  Several  days  elapsed,  therefore, 
before  the  three  new  foresters  were  properly  qualified  of- 
ficials. The  General  had  written  to  Michaud.  He  and  his 
newly  married  wife  must  come  at  once,  though  the  lodge  was 
not  yet  ready  for  them ;  but  the  future  head-forester  was  too 
busy  to  leave  Paris,  his  wife's  relations  had  come  for  the  wed- 
ding, and  it  was  impossible  for  him  to  get  away  for  another 
fortnight.  All  through  that  fortnight,  and  while  the  formali- 
ties were  being  completed,  with  no  good  grace,  at  Ville-aux- 
Fayes,  the  wood-stealing  was  in  full  swing,  there  was  no  one 
in  charge  of  the  forest,  and  the  marauders  made  the  utmost 
of  their  opportunities. 

The  sudden  portent  of  three  new  foresters  made  a  great 
sensation  in  the  valley  from  Conches  to  Ville-aux-Fayes. 
There  was  that  in  the  appearance  of  the  three  stalwart  figures, 
clad  in  a  grand  green  uniform  (the  Emperor's  color)  which 
plainly  said  that  these  were  stout  fellows,  active  and  sturdy- 
legged,  the  sort  of  men  who  might  be  expected  to  spend  their 
nights  in  the  forest. 

There  was  but  one  in  the  whole  canton  to  give  the  veterans 
a  welcome,  and  that  one  was  Groison  the  rural  policeman. 
In  his  delight  at  such  reinforcements  he  let  drop  a  few 
threatening  hints,  how  that  before  long  the  thieves  should  find 
themselves  in  a  tight  place,  and  unable  to  do  any  mischief. 
So  the  formal  declaration  of  war  was  not  omitted  in  this 
covert  but  fierce  struggle. 

Then  Sibilet  called  the  Count's  attention  to  another  fact, 
to  wit,  that  the  gendarmerie  at  Soulanges  in  general  and 
Pol  ice- Sergeant  Soudry  in  particular  were  in  reality  his  un- 
compromising foes,  and  pointed  out  how  useful  a  brigade 
might  be,  if  imbued  with  the  proper  spirit. 

"With  the  right  kind  of  corporal  and  gendarmes  devoted 
to  your  interests,  you  could  do  as  you  liked  with  the  neighbor- 
hood," said  he. 

The  Count  hurried  to  the  prefecture,  and  at  his  instance 


144  THE  PEASANTRY 

the  divisionary  commandant  put  Soudry  on  the  retired  list, 
and  replaced  him  by  one  Viollet,  a  gendarme  from  the  market 
town.  The  man  bore  an  excellent  character,  and  both  com- 
mandant and  prefect  commended  him  highly.  The  whole 
Soulanges  brigade  was  broken  up  and  distributed  over  the 
department  by  the  colonel  of  gendarmerie  (one  of  Mont- 
cornet's  old  chums),  and  a  new  brigade  was  reconstructed  of 
picked  men,  who  received  secret  instructions  to  see  that  Mont- 
cornet's  property  was  not  attacked  in  future,  together  with,  a 
particular  caution  not  to  allow  the  inhabitants  of  Soulanges 
to  gain  them  over. 

This  last  resolution  was  accomplished  so  quickly  that  it 
was  impossible  to  thwart  it;  it  spread  dismay  through  Ville- 
aux-Fayes  and  Soulanges.  Soudry  regarded  himself  as  ab- 
solutely destitute,  and  bitter  were  his  complaints,  till  Gau- 
bertin  contrived  to  carry  his  appointment  as  mayor,  so  that 
the  control  of  the  gendarmerie  might  still  be  in  his  hands. 

Great  was  the  outcry  against  this  tyranny.  Montcornet 
was  generally  hated.  It  was  not  merely  that  he  had  changed 
the  course  of  half-a-dozen  human  lives,  he  had  wounded  the 
vanity  of  several  fellow-creatures;  and  the  peasantry,  excited 
by  hints  dropped  by  the  townspeople  at  Soulanges  and  Ville- 
aux-Fayes,  or  uttered  by  Eigou,  Langlume,  or  Guerbet  (the 
postmaster  at  Conches),  imagined  that  they  were  about  to  lose 
their  "rights,"  as  they  called  them. 

The  General  hushed  up  the  dispute  with  his  sometime  for- 
ester by  paying  all  claims  in  full ;  and  as  for  Courtecuisse,  he 
gave  two  thousand  francs  for  a  little  bit  of  land  that  lay  by 
a  cover  side,  within  the  Montcornet  estate.  Old  Eigou,  who 
could  never  be  persuaded  to  part  with  the  Baclielerie  (as  it 
was  called),  took  a  malicious  pleasure  in  selling  it  now  to 
Courtecuisse  at  a  profit  of  fifty  per  cent.  The  ex-forester, 
moreover,  became  one  of  Eigou's  many  creatures,  for  he  only 
paid  down  half  the  purchase-money,  and  the  unpaid  half 
gave  the  old  money-lender  a  hold  upon  him. 

Then  began  a  life  of  guerilla  warfare  for  Michaud,  his 
three  foresters,  and  Groison.  Unweariedly  they  tramped 


THE  PEASANTRY  145 

through  the  woods,  lay  out  in  them  of  nights,  and  set  them- 
selves to  acquire  that  intimate  knowledge  which  is  the  forest- 
keeper's  science,  and  economizes  his  time.  They  watched 
the  outlets,  grew  familiar  with  the  localities  of  the  timber, 
trained  their  ears  to  detect  the  meaning  of  every  crash  of 
boughs,  of  every  different  forest  sound.  Then  they  studied 
all  the  faces  of  the  neighborhood,  the  different  families  of  the 
various  villages  were  all  passed  in  review,  the  habits  and 
characters  of  the  different  individuals  were  noted,  together 
with  the  ways  in  which  they  worked  for  a  living.  And  all 
this  was  a  harder  task  than  you  may  imagine.  The  peasants 
who  lived  on  the  Aigues,  seeing  how  carefully  these  new 
measures  had  been  concerted,  opposed  a  dumb  resistance,  a 
feint  of  acquiescence  which  baffled  this  intelligent  police 
supervision. 

Michaud  and  Sibilet  took  a  dislike  to  each  other  from  the 
very  first.  The  steward's  discontented  looks,  his  combined 
sleekness  and  gruff  manner  were  hateful  to  the  straightfor- 
ward, outspoken  soldier,  the  flower  of  the  Young  Guard.  At 
first  sight  of  his  colleague  he  called  him  "a  queer  fish"  in 
his  own  mind.  It  was  not  lost  upon  him  that  Sibilet  always 
raised  objections  whenever  any  measure  was  proposed  which 
went  to  the  root  of  the  mischief,  and  invariably  advocated 
courses  where  success  was  doubtful.  Instead  of  calming  the 
General,  Sibilet  continually  irritated  him,  as  this  brief  sketch 
must  have  shown  already ;  he  was  always  urging  him  to  take 
strong  measures,  always  trying  to  frighten  him  by  multiply- 
ing trouble,  by  making  the  most  of  trifles,  by  confronting 
him  with  old  difficulties  which  sprang  up  again  unconquered. 
Michaud  did  not  guess  the  Sibilet  deliberately  accepted  the 
part  of  spy  on  Montcornet  and  evil  genius;  that  ever  since 
his  installation  he  had  made  up  his  mind  to  serve  two  masters, 
and  finally  to  choose  the  one  that  best  suited  his  interests — 
Montcornet  or  Gaubertin;  but  the  soldier  saw  very  plainly 
the  steward's  grasping  and  base  nature,  and  could  in  no  wise 
square  this  with  honesty  of  purpose.  Nor  was  the  deep- 
seated  aversion  which  separated  the  pair  altogether  displeas- 


148  THC  PEASANTRY 

ing  to  Montcornet.  Midland's  personal  dislike  led  him  to 
watch  the  steward  as  he  would  never  have  condescended  to  do 
had  the  General  asked  him.  And  as  for  Sibilet,  he  fawned  on 
the  head-forester  and  cringed  to  him,  yet  could  not  induce 
the  true-hearted  soldier  to  lay  aside  the  excessive  civility 
which  he  set  as  a  barrier  between  them. 

After  these  explanatory  details  the  position  of  the  General's 
various  enemies,  and  the  drift  of  his  conversation  with  his 
two  ministers  ought  to  be  perfectly  intelligible. 


IX 

OF  MEDIOCRACT 

"WELL,  Michaud,  is  it  anything  new?"  asked  Montcornet, 
after  the  Countess  had  left  the  dining-room. 

"If  you  will  take  my  advice,  General,  we  will  not  talk  of 
business  here;  walls  have  ears,  and  I  should  like  to  feel  sure 
that  what  we  are  going  to  say  will  fall  into  none  but  our 
own." 

"Very  well,"  said  the  General;  "then  let  us  go  out  and 
walk  along  the  field-path  towards  Sibilet's  house;  we  may  be 
sure  that  no  one  will  overhear  us  there." 

A  few  minutes  later,  while  the  Countess  went  to  the 
Avonne  gate  with  the  Abbe  Brossette  and  Blondet,  the  Gen- 
eral strolled  through  the  fields  with  Sibilet  and  Michaud,  and 
heard  the  history  of  the  affair  in  the  Grand-I-Vert. 

"Vatel  was  in  the  wrong,"  was  Sibilet's  comment. 

"They  made  him  see  that  pretty  clearly  by  blinding  him," 
returned  Michaud.  "But  that  is  nothing.  You  know  our 
plan  of  taking  the  cattle  of  the  convicted  delinquents,  Gen- 
eral? Well,  we  shall  never  succeed.  Brunet  and  his  colleague 
Plissoud  likewise  will  never  co-operate  loyally  with  us.  They 
will  always  contrive  to  warn  the  people  beforehand.  Ver- 
michel,  Brunei's  assistant  bailiff,  went  to  find  old  Fourchon 
at  the  Grand-I-Vert.  Marie  Tonsard  is  Bonnebault's  sweet- 


THE  PEASANTRY  14T 

heart,  so  as  soon  as  she, heard  about  it  she  went  to  give  the 
alarm  at  Conches.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  depredations  are 
beginning  again." 

"Some  very  decided  step  is  more  and  more  called  for  every 
day,"  said  Sibilet. 

"What  did  I  tell  you?"  cried  the  General.  "Those  judg- 
ments which  condemned  the  offender  to  imprisonment  in 
lieu  of  a  fine  must  be  enforced.  If  they  do  not  pay  me  dam- 
ages and  costs  they  shall  go  to  prison  instead." 

"They  think  that  the  law  cannot  touch  them,  and  say 
among  themselves  that  no  one  will  dare  to  arrest  them,"  Sibi- 
let answered.  "They  fancy  that  they  can  frighten  you !  Some 
one  backs  them  at  Ville-aux-Fayes,  for  the  public  prosecutor 
seems  to  have  forgotten  the  matter  of  the  condemnations." 

"I  believe,"  said  Michaud,  seeing  that  the  General  looked 
thoughtful,  "that  by  going  to  a  good  deal  of  expense  you  may 
still  save  your  property." 

"Better  spend  money  than  proceed  to  extreme  measures," 
said  Sibilet. 

"Then  what  is  your  plan?"  Montcornet  asked,  turning  to 
his  head-forester. 

"It  is  quite  simple,"  said  Michaud ;  "it  is  a  question  of  en- 
closing your  park.  We  should  be  left  in  peace  then,  for  any 
trifling  damage  done  to  the  woods  would  be  a  criminal  of- 
fence, and  as  such  would  be  sent  to  the  court  of  assize  for 
trial." 

Sibilet  laughed.  "At  nine  francs  per  rod  the  building  ma- 
terials alone  would  cost  one-third  of  the  actual  value  of  the 
property,"  he  said. 

"There,  there !"  Montcornet  broke  in.  "I  shall  go  at  once, 
and  see  the  attorney-general." 

"The  attorney-general  may  be  of  the  same  opinion  as  the 
public  prosecutor,"  Sibilet  remarked  suavely;  "such  negli- 
gence looks  as  if  there  was  an  understanding  between  the 
two." 

"Very  good,  that  remains  to  be  found  out!"  cried  Mont- 
cornet. "If  everybody  has  to  be  sent  packing,  judges,  public 


148  THE  PEASANTRY 

prosecutor,  and  the  rest  of  them,  attorney-general  and  all; 
I  shall  go  if  need  be  to  the  Keeper  of  the  Seals  ahout  it,  or 
to  the  King  himself !" 

A  piece  of  energetic  pantomime  on  Midland's  part  made 
the  General  turn  round  upon  Sibilet  with  a  "Good-day,  my 
dear  sir."  The  steward  took  the  hint. 

"Is  it  M.  le  Comte's  intention  as  mayor,"  he  said  as  he  took 
leave,  "to  take  the  necessary  steps  towards  putting  a  stop  to 
the  abuse  of  gleaning?  The  harvest  is  about  to  begin,  and 
if  public  notice  is  to  be  given  that  no  one  will  be  allowed  to 
glean  unless  they  belong  to  the  commune,  and  are  duly  pro- 
vided with  a  certificate,  we  have  no  time  to  lose." 

"You  and  Groison  settle  it  between  you !"  answered  the 
General.  "In  dealing  with  such  people  as  these,  the  law  must 
be  carried  out  to  the  letter." 

And  so  in  a  moment  of  vexation  the  system  which  Sibilet 
had  vainly  urged  for  a  fortnight  gained  the  day,  and  found 
favor  in  Montcornet's  eyes  during  the  heat  of  anger  caused  by 
Vatel's  mishap. 

When  Sibilet  was  a  hundred  paces  away,  the  Count  spoke 
in  a  low  voice  to  his  head-forester. 

"Well,  Michaud,  my  good  fellow,  what  is  the  matter  ?" 

"You  have  an  enemy  in  your  own  household,  General, 
and  you  trust  him  with  plans  that  you  ought  not  to  tell  to 
your  own  foraging  cap." 

"I  share  your  suspicions,  my  good  friend,"  Montcornet  an- 
swered, "but  I  will  not  make  the  same  mistake  twice.  I  am 
waiting  till  you  understand  the  management  to  put  you  in 
Sibilet's  place,  and  Vatel  can  take  yours.  And  yet,  what  fault 
have  I  to  find  with  Sibilet?  He  is  accurate  and  honest;  so 
far  he  has  not  appropriated  a  hundred  francs,  and  he  has 
been  here  for  five  years.  His  nature  is  as  odious  as  it  can  pos- 
sibly be,  and  all  is  said.  Besides,  what  object  has  he  to  gain  ?" 

"He  most  certainly  has  one,  General/*'"  Michaud  said 
gravely,  "and  if  you  give  me  leave  I  will  find  it  out.  A  purse 
with  a  thousand  francs  in  it  will  loosen  that  old  rogue 
Fourchon's  tongue,  though  after  this  morning's  performance 


THE  PEASANTRY  149 

I  suspect  that  old  Fourchon  trims  his  sails  to  suit  every  wind. 
They  mean  to  force  you  to  sell  the  Aigues,  so  that  old  scoun- 
drel of  a  ropemaker  told  me.  You  may  be  sure  of  this :  there 
is  not  a  peasant,  a  small  tradesman,  farmer  or  publican,  be- 
tween Conches  and  Ville-aux-Fayes  but  has  his  money  ready 
against  the  day  of  spoil.  Fourchon  let  me  know  that  his  son- 
in-law,  Tonsard,  has  fixed  his  choice  already.  The  notion 
that  you  will  sell  the  Aigues  prevails  in  the  valley;  it  is  like 
a  pestilence  in  the  air.  Very  probably  the  steward's  lodge  and 
a  few  acres  of  land  round  about  it  will  be  the  price  of  Sibilet's 
services  as  spy.  Not  a  thing  do  we  say  among  ourselves  here, 
but  it  is  known  in  Ville-aux-Fayes.  Sibilet  is  related  to  your 
enemy  Gaubertin.  The  remark  that  you  let  fall  just  now 
about  the  attorney-general  will,  as  likely  as  not,  reach  him 
before  you  can  be  at  the  prefecture.  You  do  not  know  the 
people  hereabouts !" 

"Know  them? — I  know  that  they  are  the  scum  of  the 
earth.  To  think  of  giving  way  before  such  blackguards  !  Oh  ! 
I  would  a  hundred  times  sooner  set  fire  to  the  Aigues  my- 
self," cried  the  General. 

"Let  us  not  set  fire  to  it ;  let  us  plan  out  a  line  of  conduct 
which  will  baffle  their  Lilliputian  stratagems.  To  hear  them 
talk,  they  have  made  up  their  minds  to  go  all  lengths  against 
you;  and,  by  the  by,  General,  speaking  of  fire,  you  ought  to 
insure  all  your  houses  and  farm  buildings." 

"Oh !  Michaud,  do  you  know  what  they  mean  by  'the  Up- 
holsterer?" Yesterday  as  I  came  along  by  the  Thune  the 
little  chaps  called  out  'There  is  the  Upholsterer!'  and  ran 
away." 

"Sibilet  would  be  the  one  to  tell  you  that,"  said  Michaud 
down-heartedly ;  "he  likes  to  see  you  in  a  passion.  But  since 
you  ask  me — well,  it  is  a  nickname  those  blackguards  have 
given  you,  General." 

"Why?" 

"Why,  on  your — your  father's  account,  General." 

"Ah !  the  curs !"  shouted  the  General,  turning  white  with 
rage.  "Yes,  Michaud.,  my  father  was  a  furniture  dealer,  H 


150  THE  PEASANTRY 

cabinet-maker.  The  Countess  knows  nothing  about  it.  Oh ! 
that  ever ! — Eh,  though,  after  all,  I  have  set  queens  and  em- 
presses dancing.  I  will  tell  her  everything  this  evening,"  he 
exclaimed  after  a  pause. 

"They  say  that  you  are  a  coward,"  Michaud  went  on. 

"Ha !" 

"They  want  to  know  how  it  was  that  you  got  off  safely  at 
Essling  when  you  left  nearly  all  your  regiment  there " 

This  accusation  drew  a  smile  from  the  General. 

"Michaud,  I  am  going  to  the  prefecture,"  he  said,  still 
under  some  kind  of  strong  excitement,  "if  it  is  only  to  take 
out  insurance  policies.  Tell  the  Countess  that  I  have  gone. 
They  want  war,  do  they?  They  shall  have  it.  I  will  amuse 
myself  by  upsetting  their  schemes  for  them — these  Soulanges 
tradesmen  and  their  peasants.  We  are  in  the  enemy's  coun- 
try; we  must  mind  what  we  are  about.  Impress  it  upon  the 
foresters  that  they  must  keep  well  within  the  law.  Poor 
Vatel,  look  after  him.  The  Countess  has  been  frightened; 
she  must  know  nothing  of  all  this ;  if  she  did  she  would  never 
come  here  again !" 

Yet  neither  the  General  nor  Michaud  himself  knew  the 
real  nature  of  their  peril.  Michaud  had  too  lately  come  to 
this  Burgundian  valley;  he  had  no  idea  of  the  enemy's 
strength,  although  he  saw  the  influences  at  work;  and  as  for 
the  General,  he  put  too  much  faith  in  the  power  of  legisla- 
tion. 

The  laws,  as  fabricated  by  the  modern  legislator,  have  not 
all  the  virtue  with  which  they  are  credited.  They  are  not 
even  carried  out  equally  all  over  the  country ;  they  are  modi- 
fied in  application  until  the  practice  flatly  contradicts  the 
spirit  in  which  they  were  framed ;  and  this  is  a  patent  fact  in 
every  epoch.  What  historian  would  be  so  benighted  as  to  lay 
down  the  statement  that  the  decrees  of  the  strongest  govern- 
ments have  been  equally  enforced  all  over  France  at  once? 
or  that  in  the  time  of  the  Convention,  the  requisitions  of 
men,  stores,  and  money,  pressed  as  heavily  upon  Provence, 
or  Lower  Normandy,  or  the  borders  of  Brittany,  as  upon 


THE  PEASANTRY  151 

the  population  of  the  great  centres  of  civil  life?  Where  is 
the  philosopher  who  will  deny  that  two  men  in  two  neighbor- 
ing departments  may  commit  the  same  crime,  and  one  will 
lose  his  head,  and  the  other,  and  perhaps  the  worse  villain  of 
the  two,  keeps  his  upon  his  shoulders  ?  We  must  have  equality 
in  life,  forsooth,  and  we  have  inequality  in  the  administration 
of  the  law,  and  in  the  penalty  of  death. 

As  soon  as  the  population  of  a  city  reaches  a  certain  limit, 
the  administrative  methods  are  no  longer  the  same.  There 
are  about  a  hundred  cities  in  France  in  which  the  intelli- 
gence of  the  citizens  is  capable  of  looking  beyond  the  expe- 
diency of  the  present  moment,  and  discerning  the  wider  prob- 
lems which  the  law  attempts  to  solve ;  there  the  law  is  intelli- 
gently enforced,  but  in  the  rest  of  France,  where  people  un- 
derstand nothing  but  their  own  immediate  interests,  any- 
thing which  may  interfere  with  these  is  a  dead  letter.  Over 
one-half  of  France,  roughly  speaking,  the  vis  inertia  neutral- 
izes the  action  of  legislation  of  every  description.  Let  it  be 
clearly  understood,  however,  that  this  passive  resistance  does 
not  extend  to  certain  essentials  of  political  existence,  such 
as  the  payment  of  imperial  taxes,  the  conscription,  the  pun- 
ishment of  heinous  crime ;  but  every  attempt  in  legislation  to 
deal  with  other  than  broadly  recognized  necessities,  to  touch 
ways  of  life,  private  interests  or  certain  forms  of  abuse,  is 
frustrated  by  a  common  consent  of  reluctance.  Even  now, 
while  this  work  is  passing  through  the  press,  it  is  easy  to 
discern  the  signs  of  this  resistance,  the  same  with  which 
Louis  XIV.  came  into  collision  in  Brittany.  Seeing  the 
deplorable  state  of  things  caused  by  the  game  laws,  there  are 
those  who  will  make  an  annual  sacrifice  of  some  twenty  or 
thirty  human  lives  to  preserve  a  few  animals. 

For  a  French  population  of  twenty  millions  the  law  is  noth- 
ing but  a  sheet  of  white  paper  nailed  to  the  church  door  or 
pinned  up  in  the  mayor's  office.  Hence  Mouche's  words  "the 
papers,"  an  expression  for  authority.  Many  a  mayor  of  a 
canton  (putting  simple  mayors  of  communes  out  of  the  ques- 
tion) makes  paper  bags  for  seeds  or  raisins  out  of  sheets  of 


152  THE  PEASANTRY 

the  Bulletin  des  Lois.  And  as  to  the  mayors  of  communes, 
one  would  be  afraid  to  say  how  many  there  are  of  them  that 
can  neither  read  nor  write,  or  to  ask  how  the  registers  are 
kept  up  in  their  districts.  Every  serious  administration  is 
no  doubt  perfectly  aware  of  the  gravity  of  the  situation; 
doubtless,  too,  it  will  diminish;  but  there  is  something  else 
which  Centralization — so  much  declaimed  against  in  France, 
where  we  declaim  against  any  great  thing  which  has  any  use 
or  strength  in  it — which  Centralization  will  never  reach,  and 
this  power  against  which  it  is  shattered  is  the  same  power 
with  which  General  Montcornet  was  about  to  come  into  col- 
lision— for  want  of  a  better  name  it  may  be  called  Mediocracy. 

Great  was  the  outcry  against  the  tyranny  of  the  nobles; 
and  to-day  we  shriek  against  the  capitalist  and  abuses  of 
power  which  perhaps  after  all  are  only  the  inevitable  chafings 
of  that  social  yoke,  styled  the  Contract  by  Rousseau ;  we  hear 
of  constitutions  here  and  charters  there,  of  king  and  czar 
and  the  English  Parliament;  but  the  leveling  process  which 
began  in  1789  and  made  a  fresh  start  in  1830  has  in  reality 
paved  the  way  for  the  muddle-headed  domination  of  the 
bourgeoisie  and  delivered  France  over  to  them.  The  present- 
ment of  a  fact  seen  unhappily  but  too  often  in  these  days, 
to  wit,  the  enslavement  of  a  canton,  a  little  town,  or  a  sub- 
prefecture  by  a  single  family,  the  history  of  the  manner  in 
which  a  Gaubertin  contrived  to  gain  this  local  ascendency 
when  the  Restoration  was  in  full  swing,  will  give  a  better  idea 
of  the  crying  evil  than  any  quantity  of  flat  assertions.  Many 
an  oppressed  district  will  recognize  the  truth  of  the  picture, 
and  many  an  obscure  down-trodden  victim  will  find  in  this 
brief  hie  jacet  a  publicity  given  to  his  private  griefs  which 
sometimes  soothes  them. 

When  the  General  concluded  a  purely  imaginary  truce  for 
renewed  hostilities,  his  ex-steward  had  pretty  much  completed 
the  network  of  threads  in  which  he  held  Ville-aux-Fayes  and 
the  whole  district  roui:d  it.  It  will  be  better  to  give,  in  as 
few  words  as  possible,  an  account  of  the  various  ramifica- 
tions of  the  Gaubertin  family,  for  by  means  of  his  kin  he  had 


THE  PEASANTRY  153 

involved  the  whole  country  in  his  toils,  something  as  the  boa 
constrictor  winds  itself  about  a  tree-trunk  so  cunningly  that 
the  passing  traveler  mistakes  the  serpent  for  some  Asiatic 
vegetable  product. 

In  the  year  1793  there  were  three  brothers  of  the  name  of 
Mouchon  in  the  Avonne  valley.  (It  was  about  that  time 
that  the  name  of  the  valley  was  changed ;  hitherto  it  had  been 
the  valley  of  the  Aigues;  now  the  hated  name  of  the  old 
manor  fell  out  of  use  and  it  became  the  Avonne  valley.) 

The  oldest  of  the  brothers,  a  steward  of  the  manor  of 
Konquerolles,  became  a  deputy  of  the  department  under  the 
Convention.  He  took  a  hint  from  his  friend  Gaubertin  senior 
(the  public  accuser  who  saved  the  Soulanges  family),  and  in 
like  manner  saved  the  lives  and  property  of  the  Ronquerolles. 
This  brother  had  two  daughters;  one  of  them  married  Gen- 
drin  the  barrister,  the  other  became  the  wife  of  Frangois 
Gaubertin.  Finally,  he  died  in  1804. 

The  second  brother  obtained  the  post-house  at  Conches 
gratis,  thanks  to  the  elder's  influence.  His  daughter,  his 
sole  offspring  and  heiress,  married  a  well-to-do  farmer  in  the 
neighborhood,  Guerbet  by  name.  He  died  in  1817. 

But  the  youngest  of  the  Mouchons  took  holy  orders.  He 
was  cure  of  Ville-aux-Fayes  before  the  Revolution,  cure  again 
after  the  restoration  of  the  Catholic  religion,  and  now  the 
year  1823  still  found  him  cure  of  the  little  metropolis.  He 
had  formerly  declined  the  oath,  and  in  consequence  for  a  long 
time  had  kept  out  of  sight  and  lived  in  the  "hermitage"  at  the 
Aigues,  protected  by  the  Gaubertins,  father  and  son ;  and  now, 
at  the  age  of  sixty-seven,  he  enjoyed  the  affection  and  esteem 
of  his  whole  parish,  for  all  his  characteristics  were  common 
to  his  flock.  He  was  parsimonious  to  the  verge  of  avarice, 
was  reported  to  be  very  rich,  and  these  rumors  of  wealth 
strengthened  the  respect  which  he  met  with  on  all  sides.  His 
lordship  the  bishop  thought  very  highly  of  the  Abbe 
Mouchon,  usually  spoken  of  as  "the  venerable  cur£  of  Ville- 
aux-Fayes;"  it  was  well-known  there  that  the  bishop  had 
pressed  him  more  than  once  to  accept  a  superb  living  at  the 


154  THE  PEASANTRY 

prefecture,  and  his  repeated  refusals,  no  less  than  his  reputa- 
tion for  riches,  had  endeared  the  cure  Mouchon  to  fellow-in- 
habitants. 

At  this  time  Gaubertin,  mayor  of  Ville-aux-Fayes,  found 
a  solid  supporter  in  his  brother-in-law,  M.  Gendrin,  president 
of  the  Court  of  First  Instance,  while  his  own  son — now  the 
busiest  solicitor  in  the  place,  and  a  by-word  in  the  arrondisse- 
ment — talked  already  of  selling  his  practice  after  five  years. 
He  meant  to  be  a  barrister,  and  to  succeed  to  his  uncle  Gen- 
drin when  the  latter  retired.  President  Gendrin's  only  son 
was  registrar  of  mortgages. 

Soudry  junior,  who  had  fulfilled  the  functions  of  public 
prosecutor  for  two  years,  was  one  of  Gaubertin's  zealous  ad- 
herents. Clever  Mme.  Soudry  had  done  her  part.  She  had 
strengthened  her  husband's  son's  present  position  by  immense 
expectations  when  she  married  him  to  Rigou's  only  daughter. 
One  day  the  public  prosecutor  would  inherit  a  double  fortune, 
the  ex-monk's  money  would  come  to  him  as  well  as  Soudry's 
savings,  and  the  young  fellow  would  be  one  of  the  wealthiest 
and  most  important  men  in  the  department. 

The  sub-prefect  of  Ville-aux-Fayes  was  a  M.  des  Lupeaulx, 
a  nephew  of  the  secretary  of  a  State  department.  He  was 
meant  to  marry  Mile.  Elise  Gaubertin,  the  mayor's  youngest 
daughter.  Like  her  eldest  sister,  she  had  a  portion  of  two 
hundred  thousand  francs,  besides  expectations.  Young  <l<s 
Lupeaulx  had  unwittingly  done  a  clever  thing  on  first  coming 
to  the  place  in  1819  when  he  fell  straightway  in  love  with 
Elise;  but  for  his  eligibility  as  a  suitor,  he  would  long  since 
have  been  compelled  to  ask  for  an  exchange,  but  as  it  was,  he 
belonged  prospectively  to  the  Gaubertin  clan,  whose  chief- 
tain's eyes  were  fixed  less  upon  the  nephew  than  upon  the 
uncle  in  Paris.  For  all  the  uncle's  influence,  in  his  nephew's 
interest,  was  at  Gaubertin's  disposition. 

And  so  the  church,  the  magistracy,  permanent  and  remov- 
able, the  municipality  and  the  administration,  the  four  feet 
of  power,  walked  at  the  mayor's  will. 

This  power  was  strengthened  in  regions  above  and  below  ita 
immediate  sphere  of  action  by  the  following  means :— 


THE  PEASANTRY  156 

The  department  in  which  Ville-aux-Fayes  is  situated  is 
sufficiently  populous  to  nominate  six  deputies.  Ever  since 
the  creation  of  the  Left-Centre  in  the  Chamber,  Ville-aux- 
Fayes  had  been  represented  by  Leclercq,  who,  it  may  be  re- 
membered, was  Gaubertin's  son-in-law  and  the  agent  in 
charge  of  the  city  wine-cellars,  and  since  had  become  a  gov- 
ernor of  the  Bank  of  France.  The  number  of  electors  which 
this  well-to-do  valley  furnished  to  the  grand  electoral  college 
was  sufficiently  considerable  to  ensure  the  election  of  M.  de 
Ronquerolles  (the  patron  acquired,  as  explained,  by  the 
Mouchon  family),  even  if  an  arrangement  had  to  be  made. 
The  electors  of  Ville-aux-Fayes  gave  their  support  to  the  pre- 
fect on  condition  that  the  Marquis  de  Ronquerolles  should 
continue  to  be  elected  by  the  grand  college.  So  Gaubertin, 
the  first  to  hit  upon  this  electioneering  expedient,  was  in  good 
odor  at  the  prefecture,  which  he  saved  many  disappointments. 
The  prefect  managed  to  return  three  out-and-out  Ministerial- 
ists, as  well  as  two  deputies  for  the  Left-Centre,  and  as  one  of 
these  two  last  was  a  governor  of  the  Bank  of  France,  and  the 
other  the  Marquis  de  Ronquerolles,  the  Comte  de  Serizy's 
brother-in-law,  there  was  little  to  alarm  the  Cabinet.  So  the 
Ministry  of  the  Interior  looked  upon  the  elections  in  this  par- 
ticular department  as  very  well  regulated. 

The  Comte  de  Soulanges,  a  peer  of  France,  a  Marshal- 
designate,  and  a  faithful  adherent  of  the  House  of  Bourbon, 
knew  that  his  estates  and  woods  were  well  managed  and  prop- 
erly guarded  by  Soudry  and  Lupin  the  notary.  He  might  be 
considered  to  be  Gendrin's  patron,  for  he  had  successively 
procured  for  him  the  posts  of  judge  and  president,  with  the 
co-operation  of  M.  de  Ronquerolles. 

MM.  Leclercq  and  de  Ronquerolles  took  their  seats  in  the 
Left- Centre,  and  towards  the  Left  rather  than  to  the  Centre 
side,  a  position  in  politics  which  presents  numerous  advan- 
tages f.o  those  who  can  change  their  political  conscience  like 
a  suit  of  clothes. 

M.  Leclercq's  brother  had  obtained  the  post  of  tax-collector 
at  Ville-aux-Fayes,  and  Leclercq  himself,  the  banker-deputy 

VOL.    10 — 36 


156  THE  PEASANTRY 

of  the  arrondissement,  had  recently  purchased  a  fine  estate, 
bringing  in  thirty  thousand  francs  a  year,  together  with  a 
park  and  a  chateau,  the  whole  lying  just  outside  the  town — 
a  position  which  enabled  him  to  influence  the  whole  canton. 

In  these  ways  Gaubertin  had  power  in  the  higher  regions 
of  the  State,  in  the  two  Chambers,  and  in  the  Cabinet;  he 
could  count  upon  influence  both  potent  and  active,  and  as  yet 
he  had  not  weakened  it  by  asking  for  trifles,  nor  strained  it 
by  too  many  serious  demands. 

Councillor  Gendrin,  appointed  vice-president  by  the  Cham- 
ber, was  the  real  power  in  the  Court-Eoyal.  The  First  Presi- 
dent, one  of  the  three  Ministerialist  deputies  returned  by  the 
department,  and  an  indispensable  orator  of  the  Centre,  was 
away  for  half  the  year,  and  left  his  court  to  Vice-president 
Gendrin. 

The  prefect  himself  was  another  deputy,  and  the  prefect's 
right  hand  was  a  member  of  his  council,  a  cousin  of  Sarcus 
the  justice,  called  Money-Sarcus  by  way  of  distinction.  But 
for  the  family  considerations  which  bound  Gaubertin  and 
young  des  Lupeaulx,  Mme.  Sarcus'  brother  would  have  been 
"put  forward"  as  sub-prefect  of  the  arrondissement  of  Ville- 
aux-Fayes.  Mme.  Sarcus  (wife  of  Money-Sarcus)  was  a 
Vallat  of  Soulanges,  and  related  to  the  Gaubertins.  It  was 
said  of  her  that  she  had  shown  a  preference  for  the  notary 
Lupin  when  he  was  a  young  man ;  and  now,  though  she  was  a 
woman  of  five-and-forty,  with  a  grown-up  son,  an  assistant- 
surveyor,  Lupin  never  went  to  the  prefecture  but  he  paid  his 
respects  to  Mme.  Money-Sarcus,  or  dined  with  her. 

The  nephew  of  Guerbet,  the  postmaster,  was,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  son  of  the  Soulanges  tax-collector,  and  filled  the  im- 
portant post  of  examining  magistrate  at  the  tribunal  of  Ville- 
aux-Fayes.  The  third  magistrate  was  a  Corbinet,  son  of  the 
notary  of  that  name,  and,  of  course,  belonged  body  and  soul 
to  the  all-powerful  mayor  of  Ville-aux-Fayes,  and  (to  close 
the  list  of  legal  functionaries)  the  deputy  magistrate  was 
Vigor  junior,  son  of  the  lieutenant  of  gendarmerie. 

Now  Sibilet's  father,  who  had  been  clerk  of  the  court  ever 


THE  PEASANTRY  157 

since  there  had  been  a  court  at  all,  had  married  his  sister  to 
M.  Vigor,  the  aforesaid  lieutenant  of  gendarmerie  at  Ville- 
aux-Fayes.  Sibilet  himself,  good  man,  was  a  father  of  six, 
and  a  cousin  of  Gaubertin's  father  through  his  wife,  a  Gau- 
bertin-Vallat. 

Only  eighteen  months  ago  the  united  efforts  of  both  depu- 
ties, of  M.  de  Soulanges  and  President  Gendrin,  had  success- 
fully created  a  post  of  commissary  of  police  and  filled  it. 
The  elder  Sibilet's  second  son  had  the  appointment.  Sibi- 
let's eldest  daughter  had  married  M.  Herve,  a  schoolmas- 
ter; within  a  year  of  the  marriage  his  establishment  was 
transformed,  and  Ville-aux-Fayes  received  the  boon  of  a  head- 
master of  a  grammar  school. 

Another  Sibilet,  Maitre  Corbinet's  clerk,  looked  to  the 
Gaubertins,  Leclercqs,  and  Soudrys  to  be  his  sureties  when 
the  time  should  come  for  buying  his  employer's  practice ;  and 
the  youngest  found  employment  in  the  Inland  Revenue  De- 
partment for  the  time  being,  with  a  prospect  of  succeeding  to 
the  position  of  Registrar  when  the  present  occupant  should 
reach  the  limit  of  service  prescribed  for  obtaining  a  pension. 

Sibilet's  youngest  daughter,  a  girl  of  sixteen,  was  engaged 
to  be  married  to  Captain  Corbinet,  Maitre  Corbinet's  brother, 
master  of  the  post-office,  and  this  completes  the  history  of  the 
Sibilet  family. 

The  postmaster  at  Ville-aux-Fayes  was  Vigor  senior, 
brother-in-law  of  Leclercq  of  the  city  cellars.  He  commanded 
the  National  Guard.  Mme.  Sibilet's  sister,  an  elderly  spin- 
ster and  a  Gaubertin-Vallat,  held  the  office  of  stamp  dis- 
tributor. 

Look  where  you  liked  in  Ville-aux-Fayes,  you  found  some 
member  of  the  invisible  coalition,  headed  avowedly  (for  the 
fact  was  openly  recognized  by  great  and  small)  by  the  mayor, 
the  general  agent  of  the  timber  trade — Monsieur  Gaubertin ! 

If  you  left  the  seat  of  the  sub-prefecture  and  went  further 
down  the  Avonne  valley,  you  found  Gaubertin  again  ruling 
Soulanges  through  the  Soudrys,  and  Lupin  the  deputy-mayor, 
the  steward  of  the  manor  of  Soulanges,  in  constant  communi- 


158  THE  PEASANTRY 

cation  with  the  Count ;  through  Sarcus,  justice  of  the  peace, 
and  his  son's  wife's  father ;  through  Guerbet  the  tax-collector 
and  Gourdon  the  doctor,  who  had  married  a  Gendrin-Vatte- 
bled.  Gaubertin  governed  Blangy  through  Rigou,  and 
Conches  through  the  postmaster,  whose  word  was  law  in  his 
own  commune.  And  by  the  way  in  which  the  ambitious  mayor 
of  Ville-aux-Fayes  spread  his  influence  far  and  wide  in  the 
Avonne  valley,  it  may  be  imagined  how  far  he  made  himself 
felt  in  the  rest  of  the  arrondissement. 

The  head  of  the  firm  of  Leclercq  was  put  forward  as  prin- 
cipal deputy.  It  had  been  agreed  upon  from  the  very  first 
that  he  would  relinquish  his  place  to  Gaubertin  so  soon  as 
he  himself  should  obtain  the  post  of  receiver-general  of  the 
department.  Young  Soudry,  the  public  prosecutor,  was  to 
become  attorney-general  to  the  Court-Royal;  while  the  rich 
examining-magistrate  Guerbet  was  to  be  one  of  the  coun- 
cillors. This  general  promotion,  far  from  being  oppressive, 
was  to  ensure  the  advancement  of  others,  such  for  instance 
as  Vigor  the  deputy-magistrate,  or  Francois  Yallat,  Money- 
Sarcus'  wife's  cousin,  at  present  only  prosecutor-substitute. 
In  fact,  all  the  ambitious  young  men  in  the  valley,  and  every 
family  which  had  anything  to  gain,  were  so  many  supporters 
of  the  coalition. 

Gaubertin's  influence  was  so  serious  and  so  powerful  in 
the  district  that  its  secret  springs  of  wealth,  the  savings 
hoarded  up  by  the  Rigous,  Soudrys,  Gendrins,  Guerbets,  and 
Lupins,  nay,  by  Money-Sarcus  himself,  were  all  controlled  by 
him.  Ville-aux-Fayes,  moreover,  believed  in  its  mayor.  Gau- 
bertin's ability  was  not  more  cried  up  than  his  honesty  and 
his  readiness  to  oblige.  He  was  at  the  service  of  all  his  rela- 
tions; there  was  not  one  of  his  constituents  but  could  claim 
his  help ;  but  it  was  a  game  of  give  and  take.  His  town  coun- 
cil looked  up  to  him.  Wherefore  the  whole  department 
blamed  M.  Mariotte  of  Auxerre  for  crossing  good  M.  Gau- 
bertin's path. 

The  Ville-aux-Fayes  townspeople  took  their  abilities  for 
granted,  since  nothing  had  ever  occurred  to  put  them  to  the 


THE  PEASANTRY  159 

test;  they  prided  themselves  simply  and  solely  on  having  no 
outsiders  among  them,  and  thought  themselves  excellent  pa- 
triots. Thus  nothing  escaped  this  tyranny,  so  carefully 
thought  out  that  it  was  scarcely  recognized  as  tyranny,  for 
the  spectacle  of  natives  filling  every  high  place  struck  the 
ordinary  mind  as  a  triumph  of  native  intellect.  For  instance, 
when  the  Liberal  Opposition  declared  war  against  the  Bour- 
bons of  the  elder  branch,  Gaubertin  saw  an  opening  for  a 
natural  son  of  his,  for  whom  he  was  at  a  loss  to  provide.  His 
wife  did  not  know  of  the  existence  of  this  Bournier,  as  he  was 
called,  who  for  a  long  time  had  been  kept  in  Paris.  Leclercq 
had  looked  after  him  till  he  became  a  foreman  in  a  printing 
office,  but  now  Gaubertin  set  him  up  as  a  printer  in  the 
town  of  Ville-aux-Fayes.  Acting  on  the  prompting  of  his 
protector,  the  young  fellow  brought  out  a  newspaper  three 
times  a  week,  and  the  Courrier  de  I'Avonne  began  by  taking 
away  the  official  announcements  from  the  paper  of  the  pre- 
fecture. This  local  sheet,  while  supporting  the  Ministry,  in- 
clined to  the  Centre-Left,  and  obtained  a  large  circulation 
by  publishing  a  summary  of  the  market  reports  of  Burgundy ; 
but  in  reality  it  was  worked  in  the  interests  of  the  Rigou- 
Gaubertin-Soudry  triumvirate.  Young  Bournier,  the  head 
of  a  fairly  large  establishment  which  already  hegan  to 
pay  very  well,  paid  court,  to  one  of  Attorney  Marechal's 
daughters,  and  appeared  to  be  well  received. 

There  was  one  outsider  in  the  great  Avonnaise  family  in 
the  person  of  the  district  surveyor;  but  the  greatest  efforts 
were  being  made  to  exchange  the  stranger  for  a  native  Sar- 
cus,  Money-Sarcus'  son,  and  in  all  likelihood  this  broken 
thread  in  the  mesh  would  very  shortly  be  repaired. 

The  formidable  league  which  filled  every  public  and  pri- 
vate position  with  its  own  members,  draining  the  wealth  of 
the  neighborhood,  and  clinging  to  power  as  the  remora  clings 
to  the  ship's  keel,  was  not  visible  at  first  sight.  General  Mont- 
cornet  had  no  suspicion  of  it,  and  the  prefecture  congratu- 
lated itself  upon  the  flourishing  condition  of  Ville-aux-Fayes. 
At  the  Home  Office  it  was  said:  "There  is  a  model  sub-pre 


IflO  THE  PEASANTRY 

fecture  for  you,  everything  there  goes  on  wheels !  If  all  ai- 
rondissements  were  like  that  one,  how  happy  we  should  be !" 
And  family  cliques  came  so  effectually  to  the  aid  of  local 
feeling,  that  here  as  in  many  another  little  town,  nay,  pre- 
fecture, any  outsider  appointed  to  an  official  position  would 
have  been  forced  to  leave  the  district  within  the  year. 

The  victim  of  all-powerful  bourgeois  clannishness  is  so 
thoroughly  entangled  and  gagged  that  he  does  not  dare  to 
complain;  like  the  intruding  snail  in  a  beehive,  he  is  sealed 
up,  be-waxed  and  be-glued.  There  are  great  inducements 
to  this  course  of  invisible,  intangible  tyranny;  there  is  the 
strong  desire  to  be  among  one's  own  people,  to  see  after  one's 
own  bits  of  property ;  there  is  the  mutual  help  which  relatives 
can  afford,  and  the  guarantees  given  to  the  administration 
by  the  fact  that  its  agent  is  working  under  the  eyes  of  his 
fellow-citizens  and  amenable  to  local  public  opinion.  More- 
over, nepotism  is  not  confined  to  little  country  towns;  it  is 
quite  as  common  in  higher  branches  of  the  civil  service.  But 
what  is  the  actual  outcome?  Local  interests  triumph  over 
wider  and  larger  considerations;  the  intentions  of  the  cen- 
tral government  in  Paris  are  completely  defeated,  the  real 
facts  of  the  case  are  twisted  out  of  all  knowledge,  the  prov- 
ince laughs  in  the  face  of  the  central  authority.  Great  na- 
tional necessities  once  supplied,  in  fact,  the  remaining  laws 
generally  speaking,  instead  of  modifying  the  character  of  the 
people  are  modified  by  them,  and  the  masses,  instead  of  adapt- 
ing themselves  to  the  law,  adapt  the  law  to  themselves. 

Any  one  who  has  traveled  in  the  south  or  west  of  France, 
or  in  Alsace  (unless  indeed  he  travels  simply  for  the  sake  of 
seeing  landscapes  and  public  monuments  and  sleeping  in  the 
inns),  must  admit  that  these  observations  are  just.  As  yet 
the  effects  of  bourgeois  nepotism  only  appear  as  isolated  symp- 
toms, but  the  tendencies  of  recent  legislation  will  aggravate 
the  disease,  and  this  domination  of  dulness  may  cause  fear- 
ful evils,  as  will  be  abundantly  evident  in  the  course  of  this 
drama  in  the  Aigues  valley. 

Under  old  systems,  overturned  more  rashly  than  is  gep  - 


THE  PEASANTRY  161 

erally  thought,  under  the  Monarchy  and  the  Empire,  this  kind 
of  abuse  was  kept  in  check  by  an  upper  hierarchy;  a  coun- 
terpoise was  found  in  class  distinctions  which  were  senselessl}' 
denominated  "privilege."  But  as  soon  as  a  general  scramble 
up  the  soaped  pole  of  authority  begins,  "privilege"  ceases  to 
exist.  Would  it  not  be  wise,  moreover,  to  recognize  at  once 
that  since  there  must  be  a  "privileged  class,"  it  had  better 
consist  of  those  who  are  openly  and  avowedly  privileged  ?  that 
those  who  have  taken  their  position  by  stratagem  and  in- 
trenched themselves  in  it  by  cunning,  private  self-seeking, 
and  fraudulent  imitations  of  public  spirit,  are  only  doing  the 
work  of  despotism  over  again  on  a  fresh  foundation  and  a 
notch  lower  in  the  social  scale  ?  Shall  we  not  have  overthrown 
a  race  of  noble  tyrants  who  had  the  interests  of  their  country 
at  heart,  only  to  create  a  race  of  self-seeking  tyrants  in  their 
stead?  Shall  authority  issue  from  cellars  instead  of  spread- 
ing its  influence  from  its  natural  place  ?'  These  things  should 
be  borne  in  mind.  The  Parochialism  just  portrayed  will  gain 
ground  in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies. 

Montcornet's  friend,  the  Comte  de  la  Roche-Hugon,  had 
been  dismissed  a  short  time  before  the  General's  last  visit. 
This  dismissal  drove  the  statesman  into  the  Liberal  Opposi- 
tion; he  became  one  of  the  leading  lights  of  the  Left,  and 
then  promptly  deserted  his  party  for  an  embassy.  To  him 
succeeded,  luckily  for  Montcornet,  a  son-in-law  of  the  Mar- 
quis de  Troisville,  the  Comte  de  Casteran,  Mme.  de  Mont- 
cornet's  uncle,  who  received  him  as  a  relation,  and  graciously 
begged  him  to  renew  his  acquaintance  with  the  prefecture. 
The  Comte  de  Casteran  listened  to  Montcornet's  complaints, 
and  asked  the  bishop,  the  colonel  of  gendarmerie,  the  at- 
torney-general, Councillor  Sarcus,  and  the  commandant  of 
the  division,  to  meet  him  at  breakfast  on  the  following  day. 

Baron  Bourlac,  the  attorney-general,  first  brought  into 
prominence  by  the  trials  of  La  Chanterie  and  Rifoel,  was  a 
man  of  a  kind  invaluable  to  a  government,  by  reason  of  his 
staunch  support  of  any  party  in  power.  He  owed  his  eleva- 
tion to  a  fanatical  worship  of  the  Emperor,  and  his  con- 


1»B  THE  PEASANTRY 

tinuance  in  his  judicial  rank  partly  to  an  inflexible  nature, 
partly  to  the  professional  conscience  which  he  brought  to 
the  performance  of  his  duties.  As  a  public  prosecutor  he  had 
once  ruthlessly  hunted  out  the  remnants  of  Chouannerie.  now 
he  prosecuted  Bonapartists  with  equal  zeal.  But  time  and 
storms  had  softened  him  down,  and,  as  most  frequently  hap- 
pens, the  hero  of  terrific  legends  had  grown  charming  in  his 
ways  and  manner. 

The  Comte  de  Montcornet  set  forth  his  position,  and  men- 
tioned his  head-forester's  fears.  Then  he  began  to  talk  about 
the  necessity  of  making  examples  and  of  maintaining  the 
cause  of  property. 

His  audience  of  high  officials  heard  him  out  with  solemn 
faces,  giving  him  vague  generalities  by  way  of  answer. — "Oh, 
/)f  course,  of  course,  force  should  be  on  the  side  of  the  law. 
—Your  cause  is  the  cause  of  every  landowner. — We  will  give 
the  matter  our  attention,  but  in  our  position  we  are  obliged 
to  be  very  careful. — A  monarchy  is  bound  to  do  more  for  the 
people  than  the  people  would  do  for  themselves  if  they  were 
sovereign  rulers  as  in  1793. — The  people  have  heavy  burdens; 
our  duty  to  them  is  as  clear  as  our  duty  to  you." 

Then  the  inexorable  attorney-general  suavely  set  forth  va- 
rious thoughtful  and  benevolent  views  touching  the  lower  or- 
ders, which  would  have  convinced  future  constructors  of 
Utopias  that  the  higher  ranks  of  the  officialdom  of  that  day 
were  not  unacquainted  with  the  knotty  points  of  the  problem 
to  be  solved  by  modern  society. 

It  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  say  here,  that  at  this  very 
time,  during  the  Epoch  of  the  Restoration,  sanguinary  col- 
lisions were  very  common  all  over  the  kingdom,  and  upon  this 
very  point  in  question.  Wood-stealing  and  other  peasants' 
encroachments  were  regarded  as  vested  interests.  The 
Court  and  the  Ministry  strongly  objected  to  all  disturbances 
of  this  kind  and  to  the  bloodshed  consequent  upon  forcible 
repression,  successful  and  unsuccessful.  It  was  •  felt  that 
severity  was  needed,  but  the  local  authorities  were  made  to 
feel  that  they  had  blundered  if  the  peasants  were  put  down 
harshly,  and  if  on  the  other  hand  they  showed  any  weakness 


THE  PEASANTRY  163 

ihey  were  cashiered.  So  prefects  were  apt  to  equivocate  when 
these  deplorable  accidents  happened. 

At  the  very  outset  Money-Sarcus  had  made  a  sign  (unseen 
by  Montcornet)  which  the  prefect  and  public-prosecutor  both 
understood,  a  sign  which  changed  the  tone  of  the  conversa- 
tion that  followed.  The  attorney-general  knew  pretty  much 
how  things  were  in  the  Aigues  valley  through  his  assistant, 
young  Soudry. 

"I  can  see  that  there  will  be  a  terrible  struggle,"  the  public- 
prosecutor  had  told  his  chief  (he  had  corne  over  from  Ville- 
aux-Fayes  on  purpose  to  see  him).  "We  shall  have  gen- 
darmes killed — I  know  that  from  my  spies ;  and  the  trial  will 
be  an  ugly  business.  No  jury  will  be  got  to  convict  with  a 
prospect  of  the  hatred  of  twenty  or  thirty  families  before 
them;  they  will  not  give  us  the  heads  of  the  murderers,  nor 
the  amount  of  penal  servitude  which  we  shall  require  for  the 
accomplices.  The  utmost  we  should  obtain,  if  you  conducted 
the  prosecution  in  person,  would  be  a  few  years'  imprison- 
ment for  the  worst  offenders.  It  is  better  to  shut  our  eyes, 
for  if  we  keep  them  open  the  end  of  it  all  will  be  a  collision 
which  will  cost  lives,  and  perhaps  six  thousand  francs  to  the 
Government,  to  say  nothing  of  the  expense  of  keeping  the  men 
in  the  hulks.  That  is  paying  dear  for  a  victory  which  will 
make  the  weakness  of  justice  apparent  to  all  eyes." 

Montcornet  was  incapable  of  suspecting  the  influence  of 
"mediocracy"  in  the  valley,  so  he  never  so  much  as  mentioned 
Gaubertin,  who  stirred  up  and  rekindled  the  smouldering 
flames. 

When  breakfast  was  over,  the  Baron  took  Montcornet's 
arm  and  carried  him  off  to  the  prefect's  study.  When  they 
issued  from  this  conference  Montcornet  wrote  to  his  wife 
that  he  was  setting  out  for  Paris,  and  should  not  return  for 
a  week.  The  wisdom  of  the  measures  advised  by  Baron 
Bourlac  will  be  seen  later  on,  when  they  were  carried  into 
execution.  If  a  way  yet  remained  to  the  Aigues  of  escaping 
the  "ill-will,"  it  was  only  through  the  policy  which  Bourlac 
privately  recommended  to  Montcornet. 


164  THE  PEASANTRY 

These  explanations  will  seem  tedious  to  those  who  care  for 
nothing  but  the  interest  of  the  story,  but  it  is  worth  while 
to  observe  here  that  the  historian  of  manners  is  bound  by 
rules  even  more  stringent  than  those  which  control  the  his- 
torian of  fact.  The  historian  of  manners  is  bound  to  make 
everything  appear  probable — even  truth  itself,  while,  in  the 
domain  of  history  proper,  the  impossible  requires  no  apology ; 
these  facts  actually  happened,  and  the  writer  simply  records 
them.  The  ups  and  downs  of  family  and  social  life  are 
created  by  a  host  of  small  causes,  and  every  one  of  these  has  a 
bearing  on  the  event. 

The  man  of  science  must  clear  away  the  masses  of  an 
avalanche  which  swept  away  whole  villages,  to  show  you  the 
fallen  fragments  of  stone  on  the  mountain  side  where  the 
mass  of  snow  first  began  to  gather.  If  this  were  merely  the 
story  of  a  man's  suicide — there  are  five  hundred  suicides  in 
Paris  every  year — it  is  a  hackneyed  melodrama,  and  every 
one  is  content  with-  the  briefest  account  of  the  victim's  mo- 
tives; but  that  Property  should  commit  suicide! — who  will 
believe  it,  in  these  days  when  wealth  appears  to  be  dearer 
than  life  itself?  De  re  vestra  agitatur,  wrote  the  fabulist — 
this  story  touches  the  interests  of  all  owners  of  property. 
Let  it  be  borne  in  mind  that  if  a  canton  and  a  little  country 
town  are  in  league,  in  the  present  instance,  against  an  old 
General  who,  despite  his  reckless  courage,  had  escaped  the 
hazards  of  countless  previous  battles,  the  same  kind  of  con- 
spiracy is  set  on  foot,  in  more  than  one  department,  against 
men  who  are  striving  for  the  general  good.  Every  man  of 
genius,  every  great  statesman,  every  great  agricultural  re- 
former, every  innovator  in  short,  is  continually  threatened  by 
this  kind  of  coalition. 

This  last  indication  of  what  may  be  called  the  political 
bearing  of  the  story  not  only  brings  out  every  actor  in  his 
true  aspect,  and  gives  significance  to  the  most  trifling  details 
of  the  drama :  it  turns  a  searching  light  upon  a  Scene  where 
all  social  interests  form  the  stage  mechanism. 


THE  PEASANTRY  165 

X 

A  HAPPY  WOMAN'S  PRESENTIMENTS 

As  THE  General  stepped  into  his  carriage  and  drove  away  co 
the  prefecture,  the  Countess  reached  the  Avonne  gate,  where 
Michaud  and  Olympe  had  taken  up  their  abode  some  eigh- 
teen months  ago. 

Any  one  who  remembered  the  hunting-lodge  in  its  pre- 
vious condition,  described  above,  might  have  thought  that  the 
place  had  been  rebuilt.  The  bricks  that  had  dropped  out  or 
suffered  from  the  weather  had  been  replaced  and  the  walls 
had  been  pointed;  the  white  balusters  stood  out  against  a 
bluish  background  of  clean  slates,  and  the  whole  house  looked 
cheerful  once  more.  The  labyrinth  of  pig-sties  had  been 
cleared  away,  new  gravel  had  been  laid  down,  and  the  paths 
were  rolled  by  the  man  who  had  charge  of  the  alleys  in  the 
park.  The  window-facings,  entablatures,  and  cornices,  in- 
deed all  the  carved  stonework,  had  been  restored,  and  the 
monument  of  the  past  shone  in  all  its  ancient  glory. 

The  poultry-yard,  stable,  and  cowsheds  had  been  removed 
to  the  precincts  by  the  pheasant-house  hidden  away  behind 
the  wall;  all  the  unsightly  details  had  disappeared,  but  the 
sounds,  the  low  cooing,  and  the  flapping  of  wings  mingled 
with  the  ceaseless  murmur  of  the  forest  trees — a  most  delicate 
accompaniment  to  the  endless  song  of  Nature.  There  was 
something  of  the  wildness  of  lonely  forests  about  the  spot, 
something  too  of  the  trim  grace  of  an  English  park.  And 
the  hunting-lodge  looked  indescribably  stately,  fair,  and  pleas- 
ant a  dwelling,  now  that  its  surroundings  were  in  keeping 
with  the  exterior,  just  as  a  happy  young  housewife's  care  had 
entirely  transformed  the  lodge  within  since  the  days  of 
Courtecuisse's  brutish  slovenliness. 

It  was  in  the  height  of  summer.  The  scent  of  flowers  in 
the  garden  beds  blended  with  the  wild  scent  of  the  woods  and 
of  mown  grass  from  the  meadows  in  the  park. 


166  THE  PEASANTRY 

The  Countess  and  her  two  guests,  coming  along  a  wind- 
ing footpath  that  led  to  the  hunting-lodge,  saw  Olympe 
Michaud  sitting  in  the  doorway  at  work  upon  baby  clothes. 
The  woman's  figure,  and  her  work  as  she  sat  there  sewing, 
gave  the  touch  of  human  interest,  the  final  touch  which  the 
landscape  lacked;  a  kind  of  interest  which  appeals  to  us  in 
real  life  so  strongly  that  there  are  painters  who  have  tried, 
and  tried  mistakenly,  to  introduce  it  into  landscape  pictures, 
forgetting  that  if  they  really  render  the  spirit  of  the  land- 
scape upon  their  canvas  its  grandeur  reduces  the  human  figure 
into  insignificance.  The  scene,  as  we  actually  see  it,  is  al \vays 
circumscribed;  the  spectator's  power  of  vision  can  only  in- 
clude sufficient  of  the  background  to  place  the  figure  in  its 
proper  setting.  Poussin,  the  Kaphael  of  France,  when  he 
painted  his  Arcadian  Shepherds  subordinated  the  landscape 
to  the  figures ;  his  insight  told  him  how  pitiable  and  poor  man 
becomes  in  a  canvas  where  Nature  takes  the  chief  place. 

Here  was  August  in  all  its  glory  among  fields  ready  for  the 
harvest,  a  picture  to  arouse  simple  and  strong  emotion.  It 
was  like  a  realization  of  the  dream  of  many  a  man  who  has 
come  to  long  for  rest  after  a  storm-tossed  existence  and  a  life 
of  change  made  up  of  good  and  evil  fortune. 

Let  us  give  the  history  of  this  household  in  a  few  words. 
When  Montcornet  had  first  talked  of  the  head-forester's  place 
at  the  Aigues,  Justin  Michaud  had  not  responded  very 
warmly  to  the  gallant  cavalry  officer's  advances.  He  was 
thinking  at  the  time  of  going  into  the  army  again,  but  in 
the  thick  of  the  conference,  which  brought  him  frequently  to 
the  Hotel  Montcornet,  Michaud  set  eyes  on  Madame's  own 
woman,  and  his  ideas  underwent  a  change. 

The  girl  came  of  honest  farmers  in  Alenc,on,  and  was 
something  of  an  heiress,  for  she  had  expectations — twenty  or 
thirty  thousand  francs  would  be  hers  sooner  or  later;  but  her 
father  and  mother,  finding  themselves  in  difficulties  (a  not 
uncommon  case  with  tillers  of  the  soil  who  have  married 
young,  and  whose  parents  are  still  living),  and  consequently 
unable  to  give  their  daughter  any  education,  had  entrusted 


THE  PEASANTRY  167 

her  to  the  young  Countess,  who  placed  her  about  her  person. 
Mile.  Olympe  Charel  was  not  allowed  to  take  her  meals  at  the 
servants'  table.  The  Countess  had  her  instructed  in  dress- 
making and  plain  needlework,  and  was  rewarded  by  the 
whole-hearted  fidelity  of  which  a  Parisian  stands  in  need. 

Olympe  Charel  was  a  pretty,  rather  plump  Normande,  with 
a  shade  of  gold  in  her  fair  hair,  and  bright  eyes  that  lighted 
up  her  face,  but  a  delicate,  haughtily  curved  nose  was  perhaps 
one  of  her  most  striking  characteristics,  and  a  certain  maid- 
enliness,  in  spite  of  the  Spanish  curves  of  her  figure.  She 
had  all  the  air  of  distinction  which  a  young  girl,  of  extrac- 
tion somewhat  above  the  laboring  class,  can  acquire  from 
contact  with  a  mistress  who  admits  her  to  a  certain  degree 
of  intimacy.  She  was  well-mannered  and  becomingly  dressed, 
expressed  herself  well,  and  carried  herself  with  ease.  Mi- 
chaud  soon  fell  in  love,  and  the  more  readily  when  he  learned 
that  his  fair  one  would  have  a  prett}^  fortune  some  day. 

It  was  the  Countess  who  made  difficulties.  She  was  Tin- 
willing  to  lose  a  maid  so  useful  to  her;  but  when  Montcornet 
unfolded  his, plans  for  the  Aigues,  nothing  was  wanting  but 
the  parents'  consent  for  the  marriage  to  take  place,  and  that 
consent  was  promptly  given. 

Michaud,  like  his  master,  regarded  his  wife  as  a  superior 
being,  to  be  obeyed  without  reservation.  He  saw  before  him 
all  the  happiness  for  which  a  soldier  longs  when  he  leaves  the 
army — a  quiet  life,  plenty  of  out-door  occupation,  and  just 
sufficient  bodily  weariness  to  make  rest  delightful.  Midland's 
courage  was  established  beyond  cavil,  yet  he  had  never  re- 
ceived any  serious  wound,  and  had  had  no  experience  of  the 
physical  suffering  which  sours  many  a  veteran's  temper. 
Like  all  really  strong  natures  he  was  equable,  and  his  wife 
gave  him  unbounded  love.  Their  life  at  the  lodge  had  been 
one  long  honeymoon,  with  no  discordant  note  in  their  sur- 
roundings to  break  in  upon  their  happiness.  Kare  fortune ! 
Not  always  do  the  circumstances  of  our  outward  life  har- 
monize with  the  life  of  the  inner  self. 

The  scene  was  so  picturesque  that  the  Countess  stopped 


168  THE  PEASANTRY 

Blondet  and  the  Abbe  Brossette.  As  they  stood,  they  could 
see  the  charming  Mme.  Michaud  without  being  seen  by  her. 

"I  always  come  this  way  when  I  walk  in  the  park,"  the 
Countess  said  in  a  whisper;  "I  like  to  look  at  the  hunting-- 
lodge and  its  pair  of  turtle-doves;  it  is  like  some  favorite 
beautiful  view  for  me."  She  leant  on  Emile  Blondet's  arm, 
that  he  might  feel  the  meaning  underlying  her  words,  that 
where  speech  fell  short  touch  might  convey  a  subtle  signifi- 
cance which  women  will  divine. 

"I  wish  I  were  a  gate-keeper  at  the  Aigues !"  exclaimed 
Blondet,  with  a  smile.  .  .  .  "Why,  what  is  it  ?"  he  added, 
as  a  shade  of  sadness  crossed  the  lady's  face  at  those  words. 

"Nothing." 

Whenever  womankind  have  something  weighing  on  their 
minds,  they  will  tell  you  hypocritically  that  it  is  nothing. 

"But  possibly  the  thought  that  preys  upon  us  would  seem 
very  trifling  to  you,  though  to  us  it  is  terrible.  I,  for  my  own 
part,  envy  Olympe  her  lot " 

"Wishes  are  heard  in  heaven!"  said  the  Abbe  Brossette, 
with  a  smile  that  relieved  the  solemnity  of  his  words. 

Something  in  Olympe's  attitude  and  expression  told  Mme. 
de  Montcornet  of  anxiety  and  fears,  and  she  too  grew  anxious. 
A  woman  can  read  another  woman's  thoughts  from  the  way 
she  draws  the  needle  in  and  out,  and,  indeed,  the  head-for- 
ester's wife,  in  her  pretty  pink  dress,  her  hair  coiled  daintily 
about  her  head,  seemed  to  be  turning  over  sad  thoughts  in 
her  mind,  thoughts  but  little  in  keeping  with  her  dress,  her 
work,  and  the  sunny  day.  Now  and  again  she  looked  up  and 
fixed  unseeing  eyes  on  the  gravel  paths  or  the  green  thickets, 
and  the  anxious  expression  on  her  fair  forehead  was  the  more 
artlessly  displayed  because  she  thought  herself  unobserved. 

'•'And  I  was  envying  her !  What  can  darken  her  thoughts  ?" 
the  Countess  said,  looking  at  the  cure. 

"Can  you  explain,  madame,"  said  the  Abb6,  speaking  softly, 
"how  it  is  that  our  most  perfect  bliss  is  always  troubled  by 
dim  forebodings  ?" 

"Cure,"  said  Blondet,  smiling,  "you  permit  yourseh*  Del- 


She  "eaut  ou  Emile  Bloudet's  arm 


THE  PEASANTRY  169 

phic  answers. — 'Nothing  is  stolen,  everything  is  paid  for,' 
so  Napoleon  said." 

"Such  a  saying  in  the  Emperor's  mouth  becomes  a  gener- 
alization wide  as  humanity,"  said  the  Abbe. 

"Well,  Olympe,  what  is  the  matter,  child?"  asked  the 
Countess,  stepping  in  front  of  the  others  towards  her  ex- 
waiting-maid.  "You  look  dreamy  and  thoughtful.  Is  it 
possible  that  there  has  been  a  tiff  at  home  ?" 

Mme.  Michaud  rose  to  her  feet.  Her  face  wore  a  different 
expression  already. 

"I  should  dearly  like  to  know  what  has  brought  the  shadow 
over  that  brow,  my  child,"  said  Emile  Blondet  paternally, 
"when  we  are  almost  as  nicely  housed  here  as  the  Comte 
d'Artois  at  the  Tuileries.  This  is  likeN  a  nightingale's  nest 
in  a  thicket.  And  have  we  not  the  bravest  man  of  the  Young 
Guard  for  a  husband,  a  fine  fellow,  who  loves  us  to  distrac- 
tion? If  I  had  known  the  advantages  Montcornet  offers  you 
here,  I  would  have  left  off  writing  padding  for  newspapers, 
and  turned  head-keeper  myself!" 

"Oh,  this  is  not  the  place  for  any  one  with  your  genius, 
sir !"  said  Olympe,  smiling  back  at  him,  as  if  he  and  she  were 
old  acquaintances. 

"Why,  my  dear  little  woman,  what  is  the  matter?"  asked 
the  Countess. 

"Well,  then,  my  lady,  I  am  afraid " 

"Afraid!  of  what?"  the  Countess  asked  quickly.  The 
words  put  her  in  mind  at  once  of  Mouche  and  Fourchon. 

"Afraid  of  the  wolves  ?"  suggested  Emile,  making  a  warn- 
ing sign  which  Olympe  failed  to  understand. 

"No,  sir,  it  is  the  peasants.  In  Perche,  where  I  was  born, 
there  certainly  were  a  few  bad  characters.  But  I  could  not  be- 
lieve that  there  would  be  such  bad  people,  and  so  many  of  them 
in  a  place,  as  there  are  here.  I  do  not  pretend  to  meddle  in 
Michaud's  business,  but  he  trusts  the  peasants  so  little  that 
he  goes  armed  in  broad  daylight  if  he  is  going  through  the 
forest.  He  tells  his  men  to  be  always  on  the  lookout.  Now 
and  again  there  are  figures  prowling  about  here;  they  mean 


170  .     THE  PEASANTRY 

no  good.  The  other  day  I  was  going  along  by  the  wall  to  the 
spring  at  the  head  of  the  little  stream  with  the  sandy  bed, 
which  flows  through  the  wood  and  out  into  the  park  through 
the  grating  five  hundred  paces  away.  They  call  it  the  Silver 
Spring,  because  Bouret  (so  they  say)  strewed  silver  spangles 
in  it.  Do  you  know  it,  my  lady  ?  Very  well,  then,  there  were 
two  women  there  washing  clothes,  just  where  the  stream 
crosses  the  footpath  to  Conches.  I  heard  them  talking; 
they  did  not  know  that  I  was  near.  You  can  see  our  house 
from  the  spot.  The  two  old  creatures  were  looking  at  it  and 
one  said  to  the  other,  'What  a  lot  of  expense  they  are  going  to 
for  him  that  has  taken  old  Courtecuisse's  place !'  Then  the 
other  one  said,  'Wouldn't  you  have  to  pay  a  man  well  for 
plaguing  poor  folk,  #s  he  does  ?' — 'He  will  not  plague  them 
long,'  answered  the  first  one ;  'this  sort  of  thing  must  be  put 
a  stop  to.  After  all,  we  have  a  right  to  cut  wood.  Madame 
des  Aigues,  that's  gone,  allowed  us  to  take  faggots.  We  have 
done  it  these  thirty  years ;  so  it  is  an  established  right.' — 'We 
shall  see  how  things  go  this  winter,'  the  second  one  went  on. 
'My  man  has  sworn,  I  know,  by  all  that's  sacred,  that  we  shall 
get  our  firewood,  and  that  all  the  gendarmerie  on  earth  shall 
not  hinder  us,  and  that  he  will  do  it  himself,  and  so  much  the 
worse  for  them.' — 'Lord  sakes !  we  must  not  die  of  cold,  and 
we  must  certainly  bake  our  bread,'  said  the  first  woman. 
'They  don't  want  for  nothing,  they  don't !  That  blackguard 
Michaud's  little  wife  will  be  well  taken  care  of !' — In  fact,  my 
lady,  they  said  shocking  things  about  me,  and  you,  and  M. 
le  Comte.  Then  at  last  they  said  that  first  the  farm  buildings 
would  be  fired,  and  then  the  chateau " 

"Pooh !"  said  Emile,  "old  wives'  gossip.  They  used  to  rob 
the  General ;  now  they  will  not  rob  him  any  longer ;  and  they 
are  furious :  that  is  all.  Just  bear  in  mind  that  the  Govern- 
ment is  always  the  strongest  everywhere,  even  in  Burgundy; 
and  they  would  soon  have  a  regiment  of  horse  down  here  if 
there  was  any  occasion  for  it." 

The  cure  behind  the  Countess  was  making  signals  to 
Olympe  to  cut  short  the  tale  of  fears,  due  surely  to  the  second- 


THE  PEASANTRY  171 

sight  of  strong  love.  When  a  soul  finds  its  all  in  all  in  an- 
other soul,  it  scans  the  whole  horizon  about  that  central  figure 
to  discern  the  elements  of  the  future.  Love  brings  a  woman 
the  presentiments  which  at  a  later  day  become  the  second- 
sight  of  motherhood.  Hence  the  melancholy  and  unaccount- 
able moods  of  sadness  which  bewilder  men.  The  great  cares 
and  constant  stir  of  life  prevent  this  concentration  in  a  man, 
but  for  a  woman  all  strong  love  becomes  an  active  contempla- 
tion more  or  less  lucid,  more  or  less  profound,  according  to 
individual  character. 

"Come,  child,  show  M.  Emile  over  your  house,"  said  the 
Countess.  These  new  thoughts  had  put  La  Pechina  out  of 
her  mind,  and  she  had  quite  forgotten  the  purpose  of  her 
visit. 

The  inside  of  the  house  had  been  restored  and  brought  into 
harmony  with  the  imposing  exterior.  An  architect  and  work- 
men had  come  from  Paris  (a  slight  warmly  resented  by  Ville- 
aux-Fayes),  and  the  original  partition  walls  were  restored, 
so  that  now  there  were,  as  at  first,  four  rooms  on  the  ground 
floor.  An  old-fashioned  balustraded  wooden  staircase  rose 
at  the  further  end  of  the  lobby,  behind  it  lay  the  kitchen,  and 
on  either  side  of  it  the  two  oak-paneled  parlors  with  coats-of- 
arms  painted  on  the  ceilings.  The  furniture  had  been  chosen 
to  match  these  old-fashioned  decorations  by  the  artist  who 
had  restored  the  rooms  at  the  Aigues. 

In  those  days  it  was  not  the  custom  to  set  an  exaggerated 
value  on  the  wreckage  of  bygone  centuries.  The  lumber 
rooms  of  furniture-shops  at  Ville-aux-Fayes  were  full  of  old 
high-backed  tapestry-covered  chairs  in  carved  walnut  wood, 
console  tables,  old  timepieces,  tables,  sconces,  and  woven 
hangings,  solid  furniture  worth  half  as  much  again  as  the 
flimsy  stuff  turned  out  by  the  Faubourg  Saint- Antoine.  Two 
or  three  cartloads  of  this  old  lumber,  carefully  chosen  by  the 
aforesaid  architect,  and  some  disused  furniture  from  the  cha- 
teau, had  transformed  the  parlor  at  the  Avonne  gate  into 
something  like  an  artist's  creation.  The  dining-room  had 
been  painted  the  color  of  the  natural  wood,  a  paper  of  the  kind 
known  as  Highland  plaid  covered  the  walls.  Mme.  Michaud 
VOL.  10 — 37 


172  THE  PEASANTRY 

had  hung  white  green-fringed  dimity  curtains  in  the  win- 
dows, the  mahogany  chairs  were  covered  with  green  stuff,  and 
two  huge  mahogany  sideboards  and  a  mahogany  dining-table 
completed  the  furniture.  Prints  of  soldiers  adorned  the 
walls.  The  keeper's  guns  were  stacked  on  either  side  of  the 
porcelain  stove.  Eumor  exaggerated  these  inexpensive  glories 
until  they  became  the  last  word  of  oriental  luxury.  Strange 
it  was !  These  things  aroused  Gaubertin's  covetousness,  and 
when,  in  his  own  mind,  he  pulled  the  Aigues  to  pieces,  he 
reserved  that  palatial  lodge  for  himself. 

The  three  principal  bedrooms  occupied  the  first  floor.  Here 
you  beheld  those  muslin  curtains  associated  in  a  Parisian's 
mind  with  the  peculiar  notions  and  mental  attitude  of  those 
who  conform  to  bourgeois  standards.  Here,  if  Mme.  Michaud 
had  been  left  to  herself,  she  would  have  had  satin  wall-papers. 
Her  own  room  contained  a  four-post  bedstead,  with  a  curving 
head  and  coronal  from  which  the  embroidered  muslin  curtains 
hung.  The  rest  of  the  furniture  was  of  the  ordinary  ma- 
hogany, TJtrecht-vel vet-covered  kind  to  be  seen  everywhere; 
but  the  chimney-piece  displayed  an  alabaster  clock  flanked 
by  two  gauze-shrouded  candlesticks  and  vases  of  artificial 
flowers  beneath  glass  shades — the  quartermaster's  marriage- 
gifts  to  his  bride.  The  rooms  in  the  roof  where  La  Pechina, 
the  cook,  and  the  man  belonging  to  the  establishment  were 
lodged,  had  also  shared  in  the  benefits  of  the  restoration. 

"Olympe,  child,  there  is  something  else,"  said  the  Countess 
(she  had  gone  into  Mme.  Michaud's  room,  leaving  Umile  and 
the  cure,  who  went  downstairs  together,  when  they  heard  the 
bedroom  door  close). 

The  Abbe  Brossette  had  managed  to  get  a  word  with  Mme. 
Michaud.  So  now,  to  avoid  mentioning  the  fears  which  were 
far  more  serious  than  her  words  had  led  them  to  suppose,  she 
made  a  mysterious  communication  which  reminded  Mme.  de 
Montcornet  of  the  purpose  of  her  visit. 

"I  love  Michaud,  my  lady,  as  you  know.  Very  well  then, 
would  you  be  pleased  to  have  a  rival  always  with  you  in  the 
house?" 

"A  rival!" 


THE  PEASANTRY  173 

"Yes,  my  lady.  That  little  gypsy  you  gave  me  to  look 
after  has  fallen  in  love  with  Michaud.  She  does  not  know  it 
herself,  poor  child !  .  .  .  For  a  long  while  her  behavior 
was  a  mystery  to  me,  but  the  mystery  was  cleared  up  a  few 
days  ago." 

"A  girl  of  thirteen !" 

"Yes,  my  lady.  And  you  will  admit  that  a  woman  three 
months  advanced  in  pregnancy,  who  means  to  nurse  her  child 
herself,  may  have  fears.  I  could  not  tell  you  that  before  those 
gentlemen,  so  I  said  things  that  meant  nothing,"  the  generous 
woman  added  adroitly. 

Olympe  Michaud's  anxiety  on  Genevieve  Niseron's  account 
was  exceedingly  small,  but  she  went  in  mortal  terror  for  her 
husband,  and  the  peasants  who  had  roused  her  fears  took  a 
malicious  delight  in  keeping  them  alive. 

"And  what  opened  your  eyes  ?" 

"Nothing  and  everything !"  Olympe  answered,  looking  full 
at  the  Countess.  "Poor  little  thing,  she  is  as  slow  as  a  tor- 
toise over  everything  that  I  tell  her  to  do,  and  as  quick  as  a 
lizard  if  Justin  asks  her  for  the  least  trifle.  She  quivers  like  a 
leaf  at  the  sound  of  my  husband's  voice;  her  face,  when  she 
looks  at  him,  is  like  the  face  of  a  saint  rising  up  to  heaven; 
but  she  does  not  know  what  love  is ;  she  does  not  suspect  that 
she  is  in  love." 

"Poor  child !"  said  the  Countess,  unconscious  that  her  smile 
and  tone  revealed  her  thoughts.  Mme.  Michaud  smiled  an 
answer  to  her  young  mistress'  smile. 

"Genevieve  is  glum,  for  instance,  when  Justin  is  out  of  the 
house;  if  I  ask  her  what  she  is  thinking  about,  she  says  that 
she  is  afraid  of  M.  Eigou — all  rubbish !  She  thinks  that 
every  one  is  after  her — and  she  as  black  as  the  chimney  flue ! 
When  Justin  is  making  his  round  of  a  night  in  the  woods,  the 
child  is  every  bit  as  nervous  as  I  am.  If  I  open  the  window 
when  I  hear  my  husband's  horse  coming  I  can  see  a' light 
in  her  room,  which  shows  that  La  Pechina  (as  they  call  her) 
is  sitting  up,  waiting  for  him  to  come  in.  Like  me,  she  does 
not  go  to  bed  till  he  comes  home." 


1T4  THE  PEASANTRY 

"Thirteen  years  old!"  said  the  Countess;  "unfortunate 
girl " 

"Unfortunate?"  echoed  Olympe.  "Oh!  no.  Her  child's 
passion  will  save  her." 

"From  what?" 

"From  the  fate  of  almost  every  girl  of  her  age  hereabouts. 
She  is  not  so  plain-looking  now  since  I  have  polished  her  up, 
and  there  is  something  uncommon  about  her,  something  wild, 
that  men  find  taking. — She  has  altered  so  much  that  you 
would  not  know  her,  my  lady.  There  is  Nicolas,  the  son  of 
that  abominable  man  at  the  Grand-I-V 'ert,  and  one  of  the 
worst  rogues  in  the  place;  he  bears  the  child  a  grudge  and 
hunts  her  like  game.  You  could  scarcely  believe  that  a  rich 
man  like  M.  Eigou,  who  changes  his  servant  every  three  years, 
could  persecute  an  ugly  little  girl  of  twelve,  but  it  really 
seems  as  if  Mcolas  Tonsard  was  after  La  Pechina;  Justin 
told  me  as  much.  It  would  be  a  shocking  thing,  for  the 
people  here  live  just  like  beasts,  but  Justin  and  the  two  serv- 
ants and  I  watch  over  the  child;  so  be  easy,  my  lady;  she 
never  goes  out  except  in  broad  daylight,  and  then  she  only 
goes  from  here  to  the  Conches  gate.  If  by  chance  she  should 
fall  into  a  trap,  her  feeling  for  Justin  would  give  her  strength 
and  will  to  resist,  as  a  woman  who  cares  about  another  can 
resist  a  man  she  detests." 

"I  came  here  on  her  account,"  said  the  lady;  "I  had  no 
idea  how  much  the  visit  was  needed  for  your  sake,  for  she 
will  not  always  be  thirteen.  The  child  will  grow  handsomer." 

"Oh!  I  am  quite  sure  of  Justin,  my  lady,"  Olympe  said, 
smiling.  "What  a  man!  what  a  heart! — If  you  only  knew 
how  deep  his  gratitude  is  to  the  General,  to  whom  (he  says) 
he  owes  his  happiness !  He  is  only  too  devoted ;  he  would  risk 
his  life  as  if  he  were  in  the  army  still ;  he  forgets  that  now  he 
may  be  a  father." 

"Well,"  said  the  Countess,  with  a  glance  that  brought  the 
color  into  Olympe's  face,  "I  was  sorry  to  lose  you;  but  now 
that  I  see  your  happiness  I  have  no  regrets  left.  How  sub- 
lime and  noble  married  love  is !"  she  added,  thinking  aloud 


THE  PEASANTRY  175 

the  thought  which  she  had  not  dared  to  utter  in  the  Abbe's 
presence.  Virginie  de  Troisville  stood  lost  in  musings,  and 
Olympe  Michaud  respected  her  mistress'  mood. 

"Let  us  see,"  the  Countess  said,  speaking  like  one  who 
awakes  from  a  dream.  "Is  this  little  one  honest  ?" 

"As  honest  as  I  am  myself,  my  lady/' 

"Discreet?" 

"As  a  tomb." 

"Has  she  a  grateful  nature  ?" 

"Oh,  my  lady,  she  has  fits  of  humility,  signs  of  an  angelic 
nature,  she  comes  and  kisses  my  hands  and  says  things  that 
would  amaze  you. — 'Is  it  possible  to  die  of  love?'  she  asked 
me  the  day  before  yesterday. — 'What  makes  you  ask  me  that  ?' 
said  I. — 'I  wanted  to  know  if  it  was  a  disease.'  " 

"Did  she  say  that  ?"  exclaimed  the  Countess. 

"If  I  could  remember  all  that  she  says,  I  could  tell  you 
much  stranger  things  than  that,"  said  Olympe.  "It  looks 
as  if  she  knows  more  about  it  than  I  do." 

"Do  you  think,  my  dear,  that  she  might  take  your  place? 
for  I  cannot  do  without  an  Olympe,"  said  the  Countess,  with 
something  like  sadness  in  her  smile. 

"Not  yet,  my  lady,  she  is  too  young;  in  two  years'  time 
she  might.  Then,  if  she  must  go  away,  I  will  let  you  know. 
She  must  be  trained  first;  she  knows  nothing  of  the  world. 
Genevieve's  grandfather,  old  Niseron,  is  one  of  those  men 
who  would  have  his  throat  cut  sooner  than  tell  a  lie ;  he  would 
die  of  hunger  sooner  than  touch  anything  entrusted  to  him. 
He  holds  to  his  opinions,  and  his  granddaughter  has  been 
brought  up  in  the  same  way  of  thinking.  La  Pechina  would 
think  herself  your  equal,  for  the  good  man  has  made  a  Eepub- 
lican  of  her,  as  he  puts  it;  just  as  old  Fourchon  has  made  a 
vagabond  of  Mouche.  I  myself  laugh  at  these  flights,  but 
you  might  be  annoyed  by  them.  She  would  worship  you  for 
your  kindness,  but  she  would  not  look  up  to  you  as  above  her 
in  station.  How  can  it  be  helped !  She  is  as  wild  as  a  swal- 
low. The  mother,  too,  counts  for  something  in  all  this." 

•''Then  who  was  the  mother?" 


176  THE  PEASANTRY 

"Do  you  not  know  the  story,  my  lady  ?  Oh,  well,  old  Nise- 
ron,  the  sacristan  at  Blangy,  had  a  son,  a  fine  strapping 
young  fellow  he  was,  they  say,  and  he  was  drawn  by  the  great 
requisition.  iToung  Niseron  was  still  only  a  gunner  in  1809, 
in  a  regiment  stationed  in  the  heart  of  Illyria  and  Dalmatia. 
Then  there  came  orders  to  march  at  once  through  Hungary 
to  cut  off  the  retreat  of  the  Austrians  if  the  Emperor  should 
win  the  battle  of  Wagram.  Michaud  was  in  Dalmatia,  and  he 
told  me  all  about  it.  While  they  were  at  Zahara,  young  Nise- 
ron,  being  a  very  handsome  young  fellow,  won  the  heart  of  a 
Montenegrin  girl  from  the  hills,  who  looked  not  unkindly 
on  the  French  garrison.  After  they  left  the  place  the  girl 
found  it  impossible  to  stay  in  it,  she  had  lowered  herself  so 
much  in  her  people's  eyes;  so  Zena  Kropoli — 'the  French- 
woman,' as  they  scornfully  called  her — followed  the  regiment. 
After  the  peace  she  came  to  France.  Auguste  Niseron  asked 
for  leave  to  marry  the  Montenegrin  a  little  while  before  Gene- 
vieve was  born,  but  the  poor  thing  died  at  Yincennes  shortly 
after  the  birth  of  the  child  in  January  1810.  The  papers 
which  you  must  have,  if  a  marriage  is  to  be  valid,  came  a  few 
days  too  late,  so  Auguste  Niseron  wrote  to  ask  his  father  to 
come  for  the  child,  to  bring  a  wet-nurse  with  him,  and  to  take 
charge  of  it ;  and  it  was  very  well  he  did  so,  for  he  was  killed 
soon  after  by  a  shell  at  Montereau.  The  child  was  baptized 
Genevieve  at  Soulanges.  Mile.  Laguerre  was  much  touched 
by  the  case  and  took  an  interest  in  the  child;  it  seems  as  if 
it  were  decreed  that  Genevieve  should  be  adopted  by  the  gen- 
try at  the  Aigues.  Time  was  when  Niseron  had  all  the  baby- 
clothes  from  the  chateau,  and  he  was  helped  with  money 
too." 

The  Countess  and  Olympe,  standing  by  the  window,  saw 
Michaud  come  up  to  Blondet  and  the  Abbe  Brossette,  who 
were  chatting  as  they  walked  up  and  down  in  the  sanded 
semi-circular  space  which  corresponded  to  the  crescent  outside 
the  park  palings. 

•'Where  can  she  be?"  asked  the  lady;  "you  have  made  me 
extremely  curious  to  see  her." 

"She  has  gone  to  take  the  milk  to  Mile.  Gaillard  at  the 


THE  PEASANTRY  177 

Conches  gate.  She  cannot  he  far  away,  for  she  has  been  gone 
for  more  than  an  hour." 

"Oh,  well,  I  will  go  to  meet  her  with  these  gentlemen/'  said 
Mme.  de  Montcornet,  and  she  went  downstairs.  She  was  just 
opening  her  sunshade  when  Michaud  came  up  to  tell  her  that 
her  husband  would  probably  be  away  for  two  days. 

"M.  Michaud,"  the  Countess  began  quickly,  "tell  me  the. 
plain  truth.  Something  serious  is  afoot.  Your  wife  is  nerv- 
ous ;  and  really,  if  the  place  is  full  of  such  people  as  old  Four- 
chon,  no  one  could  live  in  it " 

"If  it  were  like  that,  we  should  not  be  on  our  legs,  my  lady," 
said  Michaud  laughing,  "for  it  would  be  very  easy  to  get  rid 
of  us  keepers.  The  peasants  call  out,  that  is  all.  But  as  for 
proceeding  from  squalling  to  acting,  from  petty  theft  to 
crime,  they  set  too  much  store  on  their  own  lives  and  the 
open  air  for  that.  Olympe  must  have  been  repeating  some 
gossip  that  frightened  her — but  a  dream  would  frighten  her 
just  now,"  he  added,  taking  his  wife's  arm  and  laying  it  on 
his  own  in  a  way  that  bade  her  say  no  more  of  her  fears. 

"Cornevin !  Juliette !"  called  Mme.  Michaud.  The  old 
servant's  face  soon  appeared  at  the  window.  "I  am  going  out 
for  a  minute  or  two.  Look  after  the  house." 

Two  huge  dogs  began  to  bark;  evidently  the  lodge  by  the 
Avonne  gate  was  not  ill  garrisoned.  The  barking  of  the  dogs 
brought  out  Cornevin  from  behind  the  wall — Cornevin,  a 
Percheron  and  Olympe's  foster-father,  with  a  face  such  as 
Perche  alone  can  produce.  Cornevin  must  surely  have  been 
a  Chouan  in  '94  and  '99. 

The  whole  party  went  with  the  Countess  along  that  one  of 
the  six  graveled  ways  which  went  by  the  side  of  the  Silver 
Spring  towards  the  Conches  gate.  Mme.  de  Montcornet  and 
Blondet  walked  ahead  of  the  others.  The  cure,  the  head- 
forester,  and  Olympe  talked  with  lowered  voices  over  this 
revelation  which  had  been  made  to  the  lady. 

"Perhaps  it  is  all  for  the  best,"  concluded  the  cure,  "for 
if  Mme.  de  Montcornet  chooses  we  may  work  a  change  in 
these  people  by  kindness  and  gentleness." 


178  THE  PEASANTRY 

They  had  come  about  a  couple  of  hundred  yards  from  the 
lodge  by  this  time,  and  had  passed  the  point  where  the  stream 
flowed  in,  when  the  Countess  saw  the  broken  shards  of  a  red 
earthen  pitcher  on  the  path;  milk  had  been  spilt. 

"What  has  happened  to  the  child?"  she  asked,  calling  to 
Michaud  and  his  wife,  who  had  turned  back. 

"The  same  little  mishap  that  befell  the  milkmaid  in  the 
fable,"  said  Blondet. 

"No,"  said  the  Abbe,  looking  about  him,  "some  one  sprang 
out  upon  the  child  and  chased  her." 

"Yes.  Those  are  certainly  La  Pechina's  footprints,"  said 
Michaud.  The  footmarks  turned  so  sharply  that  evidently 
the  whole  thing  had  happened  suddenly.  The  little  girl,  in 
her  terror,  must  have  made  a  dash  for  the  lodge  and  tried 
to  reach  home. 

The  whole  party  followed  the  track  pointed  out  by  the  head- 
forester,  and  saw  that  the  footmarks  came  to  an  abrupt  end 
in  the  middle  of  the  path,  about  a  hundred  paces  from  the 
broken  pitcher. 

"There  she  turned  off  towards  the  Avonne,"  said  Michaud. 
"Perhaps  some  one  cut  off  her  retreat." 

"Why,  she  has  been  away  for  more  than  an  hour!"  cried 
Mme.  Michaud. 

The  same  dismay  was  visible  in  all  faces.  The  cure  hurried 
towards  the  lodge,  looking  along  the  path ;  and  Michaud,  with 
the  same  idea  in  his  mind,  went  in  the  other  direction  towards 
Conches. 

"Good  heavens !  she  had  a  fall  here,"  said  Michaud,  return- 
ing from  the  point  where  the  footprints  ceased  in  the  direc- 
tion of  the  Silver  Spring  to  the  other  point,  where  they  came 
to  an  end  in  the  middle  of  the  path.  "Look  here!"  He 
pointed  to  a  spot  where  every  one  saw  at  once  the  marks  of 
a  headlong  fall. 

"Those  footprints  that  point  toward  the  woods  are  marks 
of  stocking-soles,"  said  the  cure. 

"Of  a  woman's  foot,"  said  the  Countess. 

"But  down  there,  where  the  pitcher  was  broken,  there  are 
a  man's  footprints,"  added  Miehaud. 


THE  PEASANTRY  179 

"There  is  only  one  set  of  footmarks  that  I  can  see,"  said 
the  cure,  who  had  returned  from  following  the  woman's  track 
as  far  as  the  wood. 

"Some  one  has  caught  her  up  and  carried  her  off  into  the 
wood !"  cried  Michaud. 

"If  the  footmarks  are  made  by  a  woman  the  thing  is  in- 
explicable," added  Blondet. 

"That  abominable  Nicolas  must  have  been  at  his  games," 
said  Michaud ;  "he  has  been  lying  in  wait  for  La  Pechina  for 
several  days  past.  I  waited  for  two  hours  this  morning  under 
the  Avonne  bridge  to  catch  my  gentleman;  perhaps  he  has 
got  some  woman  to  help  him." 

"It  is  shocking !"  cried  the  Countess. 

"They  look  upon  it  as  a  joke,"  said  the  cure,  half  sadly, 
half  bitterly. 

"Oh,  La  Pechina  would  not  let  them  hold  her!"  said  Mi- 
chaud, "she  is  just  the  one  to  swim  the  Avonne.  I  will  go 
and  look  along  the  river. — Olympe,  dear,  you  must  go  home. — 
And  perhaps  you,  gentlemen,  will  go  with  my  lady  along 
the  way  to  Conches." 

"0  what  a  neighborhood !"  said  the  Countess. 

"There  are  blackguards  everywhere,"  Blondet  suggested. 

"M.  le  Cure,  is  it  true  that  my  interference  saved  this  child 
from  old  Rigou's  clutches?"  asked  Mme.  de  Montcornet. 

"Any  girl  under  the  age  of  fifteen  whom  you  take  to  the 
chateau  will  be  rescued  from  that  monster,"  said  the  Abbe 
Brossette.  "When  the  apostate  tried  to  get  hold  of  the  child, 
he  meant  to  slake  his  thirst  for  vengeance  as  well  as  his  licen- 
tious desires.  When  I  took  old  Niseron  as  sacristan,  I  made 
him  understand  what  Rigou  meant;  Rigou  used  to  talk  of 
making  reparation  for  the  injuries  done  him  by  his  uncle  M. 
Mseron,  my  predecessor.  The  ex-mayor  bore  me  a  grudge  for 
that,  it  swelled  his  hate.  Old  Niseron  gave  Rigou  solemn 
warning  that  if  any  harm  came  to  Genevieve,  he  would  kill 
him,  and  that  he  held  Rigou  responsible  for  any  attempt  upon 
the  child.  I  should  not  be  very  far  wrong  if  I  saw  some  in- 
fernal plot  of  his  in  Nicolas  'Tonsard's  behavior.  He  thinks 
he  ean  do  as  he  likes  here." 


180  THE  PEASANTRY 

"But  is  he  not  afraid  of  the  law  ?"  asked  Blondet. 

"In  the  first  place,  Rigou  is  the  public  prosecutor's  father- 
in-law,"  the  cure  began.  There  was  a  pause;  then  he  went 
on. — "You  would  not  imagine  how  utterly  indifferent  the 
divisional  police  and  the  criminal  department  are  here  with 
regard  to  such  things.  So  long  as  the  peasants  refrain  from 
arson  and  murder,  so  long  as  they  pay  the  taxes  and  do  not 
poison  people,  they  may  do  as  they  please  among  themselves, 
and  as  they  have  not  a  vestige  of  religious  principle,  the  state 
of  things  is  shocking.  On  the  other  side  of  the  valley  there 
are  helpless  old  men,  past  work,  who  are  afraid  to  stay  in 
their  homes  lest  they  should  be  starved  to  death ;  they  are  out 
in  the  fields  as  long  as  their  legs  will  carry  them ;  they  know 
that  if  they  once  take  to  their  beds  they  will  die — of  sheer 
hunger.  M.  Sarcus,  the  justice  of  the  peace,  says  that  if  all 
criminals  were  brought  to  justice,  the  government  would  be 
bankrupt  through  expenses  of  prosecution." 

"Well,  there  is  a  magistrate  who  sees  things  as  they  are !" 
exclaimed  Blondet. 

"Ah,  his  lordship  the  bishop  knew  quite  well  how  things 
were  in  this  valley,  and  more  especially  in  this  commune," 
the  cure  continued.  "Religion  is  the  only  remedy  for  such 
evils;  legislation  seems  to  me  to  be  powerless,  restricted  as 
it  is " 

The  cure  was  interrupted  by  shrieks  from  the  wood.  Emile 
Blondet  and  the  Abbe,  followed  by  the  Countess,  plunged 
boldly  in  the  direction  from  which  the  cries  came. 

XI 

THE   OARISTYS,    THE    EIGHTEENTH    ECLOGUE    OF    THEOCRITUS, 
LITTLE  APPRECIATED  IN  A  COURT  OF  ASSIZE 

SOMETHING  of  the  sagacity  of  the  savage,  developed  in  Mi- 
chaud  by  his  new  calling,  together  with  a  newly-acquired 
knowledge  of  the  state  of  feeling  and  affairs  in  the  commune 
of  Blangy,  had  just  explained,  in  part,  a  third  idyl,  modeled 


THE  PEASANTRY  181 

on  the  Greek.  Impecunious  swains  like  Nicolas  Tonsard  and 
well-to-do  seniors  of  the  stamp  of  old  Eigou  make  liberal 
translations  of  such  Idyls  (in  school  phrase)  for  the  use  of 
remote  country  districts. 

Nicolas,  Tonsard's  second  son,  had  drawn  an  unlucky  num- 
ber in  the  last  conscription.  Two  years  previously,  thanks 
to  the  united  efforts  of  Soudry,  Gaubertin,  and  Money-Sarcus, 
Nicolas'  older  brother  had  been  pronounced  unfit  for  military 
service,  on  account  of  some  imaginary  affection  of  the  muscles 
of  the  right  arm.  Jean-Louis'  subsequent  dexterity  in  hand- 
ling the  heaviest  implements  of  husbandry  had  been  much  re- 
marked, and  had  caused  some  talk  in  the  district. 

So  Soudry,  Eigou,  and  Gaubertin,  who  watched  over  the 
family,  warned  Tonsard  that  Nicolas,  a  big  tall  fellow,  must 
not  attempt  to  evade  the  law  of  conscription.  At  the  same 
time,  however,  both  the  worthy  mayor  of  Ville-aux-Fayes 
and  Eigou  had  so  lively  a  sense  of  thie  necessity  of  keeping 
on  good  terms  with  a  bold  man  who  might  be  a  useful  engine 
if  properly  directed  against  the  Aigues,  'that  Eigou  held  out 
some  hope  to  the  Tonsards,  father  and  son. 

Catherine,  that  devoted  sister,  paid  the  unfrocked  monk 
an  occasional  visit,  and  was  advised  to  apply  to  the  General 
and  the  Countess. 

"He  maybe  would  not  be  sorry  to  do  it  to  make  things 
sweet,  and  anyway  it  would  be  so  much  out  of  the  enemy," 
said  the  public-prosecutor's  terrible  father-in-law  to  Cath- 
erine, demanding  counsel.  "If  the  Upholsterer  refuses — well, 
we  shall  see." 

In  Eigou's  forecasts  the  General's  refusal  was  one  more 
wrong  to  swell  the  account  of  injuries  done  to  the  peasants 
by  the  great  landowner,  as  well  as  a  fresh  cause  for  gratitude 
to  bind  Tonsard  to  the  coalition  if  the  ex-mayor's  crafty  brain 
should  hit  upon  some  way  of  liberating  Nicolas. 

Nicolas,  bound  to  present  himself  for  medical  examination 
in  a  few  days'  time,  founded  little  hope  on  the  General's  in- 
fluence, for  the  Aigues  had  several  grievances  against  the 
Tonsards.  Nicolas'  passion,  or,  more  properly  speaking,  his 


182  THE  PEASANTRY 

fancy  or  whim  for  La  Pechina  was  so  heated  by  the  notion 
of  an  approaching  departure  which  left  him  no  time  to  carry 
out  his  projects  concerning  her  that  he  determined  to  try 
violence. 

The  contempt  that  the  child  showed  her  persecutor,  to- 
gether with  her  energetic  resistance,  had  kindled  in  the  Love- 
lace of  the  Grand-I-Vert  a  fury  of  hate  that  equaled  his 
frenzy  of  desire.  For  three  days  he  had  lain  in  wait  for  La 
Pechina,  and  she,  poor  child,  knew  of  this.  Between  the 
girl  and  Nicolas  there  was  the  same  mutual  recognition  that 
there  is  between  the  sportsman  and  the  game.  La  Pechina 
could  not  go  beyond  the  great  iron  gates  but  Nicolas  would 
show  his  face  in  one  of  the  paths  under  the  park  walls,  or 
he  was  waiting  about  on  the  bridge  over  the  Avonne.  She 
could  soon  have  put  herself  beyond  reach  of  this  hateful  per- 
secution by  speaking  to  her  grandfather,  but  a  strange  fear, 
perhaps  a  natural  instinct,  leads  even  the  simplest-natured 
girls  to  shrink  from  confiding  in  their  natural  protectors  in 
matters  of  this  kind. 

Genevieve,  moreover,  had  heard  old  Niseron  solemnly  swear 
that  he  would  kill  any  man  whatsoever  who  should  dare  (his 
own  expression)  "to  lay  a  finger  on  her."  (The  old  man  im- 
agined that  the  white  aureole  of  his  own  seventy  blameless 
years  of  life  would  be  a  protection  to  his  little  grand- 
daughter.) The  prospect  of  a  tragedy  positively  appalling 
to  a  girl's  lively  imagination  is  quite  sufficient  to  seal  her  lips ; 
there  is  no  need  to  explore  the  recesses  of  her  heart  for  a 
multiplication  of  curious  reasons  for  her  silence. 

The  cow  at  the  Conches  gate  had  calved,  and  Mme.  Mi- 
chaud  was  daily  sending  milk  to  Gaillard's  daughter.  Before 
La  Pechina  set  out  on  this  errand,  she  always  made  a  survey 
like  a  cat  about  to  venture  forth  from  the  house.  She  saw  no 
sign  of  Nicolas ;  she  "listened  to  the  silence,"  as  the  poet  says, 
and  hearing  nothing,  thought  that  the  scoundrel  must  have 
gone  to  his  work.  The  peasants  had  begun  to  cut  their  rye ; 
they  always  finish  their  own  little  patches  early,  so  as  to  be 
ready  to  earn  the  extra  wages  paid  to  harvesters.  But  Nicolas 


THE  PEASANTRY  183 

was  not  the  man  to  make  much  ado  over  the  loss  of  a  couple 
of  days'  wages,  and  he  was  the  less  likely  to  grudge  them 
just  now  because  he  was  going  away  after  the  Soulanges  fair, 
and  to  "go  for  a  soldier"  means  the  beginning  of  a  new  life 
for  the  peasant. 

But  when  La  Pechina,  with  her  pitcher  on  her  head,  had 
come  half-way,  Nicolas  scrambled  like  a  wildcat  down  the 
elm-tree,  where  he  lay  in  hiding  among  the  leaves,  and  drop- 
ped like  a  thunderbolt  at  her  feet.  La  Pechina  flung  away 
her  pitcher,  and  trusted  to  her  speed  to  reach  the  lodge.  But 
Catherine,  lying  in  ambush  a  hundred  paces  away,  sprang  out 
of  the  wood  and  ran  up  against  the  little  girl  with  such  force 
that  La  Pechina  fell  over.  Catherine  picked  her  up  still  dazed 
with  the  violent  shock,  and  carried  her  off  into  an  open  space 
among  the  trees  where  the  Silver  Spring  bubbled  up  in  the 
grass. 

Catherine  was  tall  and  strong.  In  all  respects  she  recalled 
the  models  selected  by  painters  and  sculptors  for  figures  of 
Liberty  and  the  ideal  Eepublic.  Her  beauty,  which  found 
favor  in  the  eyes  of  the  youth  of  the  valley,  was  of  the  same 
full-blossomed  type,  she  had  the  same  strong  pliant  figure, 
the  same  muscular  lower  limbs,  the  plump  arms,  the  eyes  that 
gleamed  with  a  spark  of  fire,  the  proud  expression,' the  hair 
grasped  and  twisted  in  thick  handfuls,  the  masculine  fore- 
head, the  red  mouth,  the  lips  that  curled  back  with  a  smile 
that  had  something  almost  ferocious  in  it — such  a  smile  as 
Delacroix  and  David  (of  Angers)  caught  and  rendered  to  ad- 
miration. A  glowing  brunette,  the  image  of  the  people,  the 
flames  of  insurrection  seemed  to  leap  forth  from  her  clear 
tawny  eyes;  there  was  a  soldierly  insolence  in  their  piercing 
gaze.  Catherine  had  inherited  from  her  father  a  temper  so 
violent  that  every  other  member  of  the  family  at  the  tavern 
feared  her,  Tonsard  excepted. 

"Well,  how  do  you  feel,  old  girl  ?"  she  asked  of  La  Pechina. 
Catherine,  for  her  own  ends,  had  set  her  victim  down  on  a 
little  knoll  beside  the  spring,  and  had  brought  her  to  her 
senses  by  splashing  cold  water  in  her  face. 


184  THE  PEASANTRY 

"Where  am  I  ?"  asked  the  little  girl,  opening  her  beautiful 
dark  eyes.  It  was  as  if  a  ray  of  sunlight  shone  from  them. 

"Ah !  if  it  hadn't  been  for  me,  you  would  be  dead  by  now," 
returned  Catherine. 

"Thank  you/'  said  the  child,  still  quite  dizzy  with  her  fall. 
"What  can  have  happened  to  me  ?" 

"You  stumbled  over  a  tree  root,  and  down  you  went  as  if  a 
bullet  had  struck  you.  Oh !  didn't  you  run  too !  You  bolted 
away  like  a  mad  thing !" 

"It  was  your  brother's  fault,  he  caused  the  accident,"  said 
La  Pechina,  recollecting  the  sight  of  Nicolas. 

"My  brother  ?  I  did  not  see  him,"  said  Catherine.  "Poor 
Nicolas,  what  may  he  have  done  that  you  are  as  frightened  of 
him  as  if  he  were  a  bogey  ?  Isn't  he  better-looking  than  your 
M.  Michaud?" 

"Oh !"  said  La  Pechina  disdainfully. 

"Come,  child,  you  are  laying  up  trouble  for  yourself  by 
being  so  fond  of  those  who  persecute  us!  Why  are  you  not 
on  our  side?" 

"Why  do  you  never  set  foot  in  a  church  ?  And  why  do  you 
steal  night  and  day?"  the  younger  girl  inquired. 

"So  you  believe  what  the  masters  tell  you,  do  you?"  re- 
torted Catherine  scornfully,  and  without  suspicion  of  La 
Pechina's  attachment.  "The  bourgeois  are  fond  of  us,  as  they 
are  fond  of  their  food;  they  must  have  a  plateful  of  some- 
thing new  every  day.  Where  may  you  have  seen  the  bourgeois 
that  would  marry  one  of  us  .peasant  girls?  Just  you  see 
whether  Money-Sarcus  will  allow  his  son  to  marry  pretty 
Gatienne  Giboulard  of  Auxerre,  though  her  father  is  a  rich 
man  and  a  cabinet-maker!  You  have  never  been  to  the 
Tivoli  at  Soulanges,  Socquard's  place.  You  ought  to  come. 
You  would  see  the  bourgeois,  there,  that  you  would!  Then 
you  would  begin  to  see  that  they  are  hardly  worth  the  money 
that  we  make  out  of  them  when  we  get  hold  of  them.  Just 
you  come  to  the  fair  this  year." 

"People  say  that  the  fair  at  Soulanges  is  very  fine!"  La 
Pechina  cried  childishly. 


THE  PEASANTRY  185 

"I  will  just  tell  you  what  it  is  in  two  words,"  Catherine 
went  on.  "If  you  are  pretty,  they  make  eyes  at  you.  What 
is  the  good  of  being  as  pretty  as  you  are  if  it  is  not  to  have 
the  men  admire  you  ?  Oh !  the  first  time  I  heard  some  one 
say,  'What  a  fine  girl !'  the  blood  in  my  veins  turned  to  fire. 
That  was  at  Socquard's,  when  the  dancing  was  in  full  swing; 
grandfather  was  playing  the  clarinette,  and  he  smiled,  and 
I  thought  the  Tivoli  as  big  and  as  fine  as  heaven.  Why,  child, 
it  is  all  lighted  up  with  Argand  lamps  and  looking-glasses: 
you  might  think  you  were  in  paradise.  And  all  the  gentlemen 
from  Soulanges  and  Auxerre  and  Ville-aux-Fayes  are  there. 
Ever  since  that  night  I  have  loved  the  place  where  those  words 
sounded  in  my  ears  like  military  music.  You  would  bargain 
away  your  eternity  to  hear  that  said  of  you,  child,  by  the  man 
you  have  a  liking  for !" 

"Why,  yes ;  perhaps,"  said  La  Pechina  dreamily. 

"Just  come  and  hear  that  benediction  from  a  man's  lips; 
you  are  sure  to  have  it !"  cried  Catherine.  "Lord,  a  girl  as 
smart  as  you  are  stands  a  good  chance  of  making  a  fine  match  ! 
There  is  M.  Lupin's  son,  Amaury,  he  has  coats  with  gold  but- 
tons all  down  them;  he  would  be  very  likely  to  ask  for  you 
in  marriage !  And  that  is  not  all,  by  any  means !  If  you  but 
knew  what  a  cure  for  care  they  keep  there !  Look  here — Soc- 
quard's spiced  wine  would  make  you  forget  the  biggest  trou- 
bles. Only  imagine  it,  it  puts  fancies  into  your  head,  you  feel 
lighter ! — You  have  never  drunk  spiced  wine,  have  you  ? — Oh, 
well  then,  you  do  not  know  what  life  is  !" 

The  grown-up  person's  privilege  of  moistening  the  throat 
now  and  again  with  a  glass  of  spiced  wine  excites  the  curiosity 
of  a  child  under  twelve  to  such  a  pitch  that  Genevi&ve  once 
had  put  to  her  lips  a  glass  that  the  doctor  ordered  for  her 
grandfather  when  the  old  man  was  ill.  That  experiment,  and 
a  sort  of  magical  memory  which  it  had  left  in  the  poor  child's 
mind,  may  explain  the  attentive  hearing  which  she  gave  to 
Catherine.  That  wicked  creature  had  counted  upon  making 
an  impression,  to  carry  out  in  full  a  plan  which  so  far  had 
met  with  success.  Doubtless  she  meant  that  her  victim,  half* 


186  THE  PEASANTRY 

stunned  by  her  fall,  should  reach  a  stage  of  mental  intoxica- 
tion particularly  dangerous  for  a  country  girl  whose  seldom- 
stirred  imagination  is  so  much  the  more  ardent  when  once 
heated.  The  spiced  wine,  kept  in  reserve,  was  to  complete 
the  task  of  turning  the  victim's  head. 

"Then  what  is  there  in  it  ?"  asked  La  Pechina, 

"All  sorts  of  things !"  said  Catherine,  glancing  sideways 
to  see  whether  her  brother  was  coming.  "Thing-um-bobs 
from  the  Indies,  to  begin  with,  cinnamon  and  herbs  that 
change  you  by  enchantment.  In  fact,  you  feel  as  if  you  have 
everything  you  want.  It  makes  you  happy !  You  do  not  care 
a  straw  for  anything." 

"I  should  be  afraid  to  drink  spiced  wine  while  I  was  danc- 
ing!" put  in  La  Pechina. 

"Afraid  of  what?"  asked  Catherine.  "There  is  not  the 
least  thing  to  be  afraid  of.  Just  remember  what  a  lot  of 
people  there  are  about.  And  all  the  bourgeois  looking  on  at 
us !  Ah !  one  day  of  that  kind  will  help  you  bear  up  against 
lots  of  troubles.  See  it  and  die,  one  would  be  content." 

"If  only  M.  and  Mme.  Michaud  would  come  too "  be- 
gan La  Pechina,  her  eyes  on  fire. 

"Why,  there  is  your  grandfather  Niseron,  you  Haven't  given 
him  up,  have  you?  Poor  dear  man,  he  would  feel  flattered 
to  see  )rou  queening  it !  Do  you  really  like  those  arminacs, 
Michaud  and  the  rest  of  them,  better  than  your  grandfather 
and  us  Burgundians?  It  is  not  nice  to  forsake  your  own 
kith  and  kin.  And  then,  besides,  what  could  the  Michauds 
say  if  your  grandfather  were  to  take  you  to  the  fair  at  Sou- 
langes  ? — Oh  !  if  you  only  knew  what  it  is  to  reign  over  a  man, 
to  have  him .  wild  about  you,  to  be  able  to  tell  him  to  'Go 
there !'  as  I  tell  Godain,  and  he  goes,  or  'Do  this !'  and  he  does 
it !  And  rigged  out  as  you  are,  child,  you  see,  you  would 
completely  turn  some  gentleman's  head ;  M.  Lupin's  son,  for 
instance. — To  think  that  M.  Amaury  is  sweet  upon  Marie, 
my  sister,  because  she  has  fair  hair;  and  he  is  afraid  of  me, 
as  you  may  say. — But  as  for  you,  now  that  those  people  at 
the  lodge  have  smartened  you  up,  you  look  like  an  empress." 


THE  PEASANTRY  187 

While  Catherine  cleverly  turned  the  girl's  thoughts  away 
from  Nicolas,  the  better  to  dispel  suspicion  in  that  simple 
mind,  she  cunningly  distilled  the  nectar  of  flattery.  Unwit- 
tingly she  had  found  the  weak  spot  in  her  victim's  heart. 
La  Pechina,  though  neither  more  nor  less  than  a  poor  peasant 
girl,  was  an  appalling  instance  of  precocious  development, 
like  many  a  nature  destined  to  end  even  as  they  blossom,  pre- 
maturely. She  was  a  strange  freak,  produced  by  crossing  the 
Montenegrin  and  Burgundian  strains,  begotten  and  born 
amid  the  turmoil  of  war,  and  all  these  circumstances  had 
doubtless  gone  to  the  moulding  of  her.  Thin,  slender,  and 
brown  as  a  tobacco-leaf,  she  possessed  incredible  physical 
strength;  but  her  low  height  was  deceptive  to  the  eyes  of 
peasants  who  know  nothing  of  the  mysteries  of  the  nervous 
system.  Nerves  do  not  come  within  the  ken  of  rural  pa- 
thology. 

Genevieve  at  thirteen  was  scarce  as  tall  as  other  girls  of  her 
age,  but  she  had  come  to  her  full  height.  Did  she  owe  to  her 
extraction,  or  to  the  sun  of  Burgundy,  the  dusky  but  glowing 
topaz-tint  of  her  face?  the  glow  of  the  blood  through  the 
dusky  transparent  tissues,  a  color  that  adds  years  to  a  girl's 
apparent  age?  Medical  science  would  perhaps  decline  to  de- 
cide. The  premature  age  of  La  Pechina's  features  was  atoned 
for  by  the  brightness — the  splendid  blaze  of  light — in  the 
eyes  that  shone  like  two  stars.  Perhaps  it  is  because  such 
eyes  are  so  full  of  sunlight  that  they  are  always  shaded  by 
long  thick  lashes ;  hers  were  almost  exaggerated  in  length. 

Thick  tresses  of  blue-black  hair,  fine  and  long  and  abun- 
dant, rose  above  a  forehead  carved  like  the  brows  of  an  an- 
tique Juno,  but  the  splendid  crown  of  hair,  the  great  dark 
eyes,  the  goddess'  brow  eclipsed  the  lower  part  of  the  face. 
The  upper  part  of  the  nose  was  regular  in  shape  and  slightly 
aquiline,  but  below  it  terminated  in  blunted  nostrils,  with 
something  equine  about  them.  In  moments  of  vehement  ex- 
citement they  turn  up,  a  trick  of  facial  expression  that  gave 
her  a  look  of  fierce  frenzy.  Like  the  nose,  the  rest  of  the  face 

seemed  to  have  been  left  unfinished ;  it  was  as  if  clay  had  been 
VOL.  10—38 


188  THE  PEASANTRY 

wanting  to  the  hand  of  the  Great  Sculptor.  The  space  be- 
neath the  mouth  was  so  narrow  that  any  one  who  should  take 
La  Pechina  by  the  chin  must  have  touched  her  lips;  but  her 
teeth  diverted  attention  from  this  defect.  You  could  almost 
have  credited  each  one  of  those  little,  glistening,  enameled, 
shapely-cut,  translucent  bones  with  intelligent  life,  and  a 
mouth  somewhat  too  wide  made  it  easy  to  see  them.  This  last 
defect  was  further  emphasized  by  the  sinuous  curving  lines 
of  lips,  that  bore  a  resemblance  to  the  fantastic  branchings 
of  coral. 

The  shell-like  convolutions  of  her  ears  were  so  translucent 
that  they  turned  to  a  rose-red  in  the  light.  Sunburned 
though  she  was,  the  skin  revealed  the  marvelous  fineness  of 
the  tissues  beneath.  If  love  lies  in  the  sense  of  touch,  as  Buf- 
fon  avers,  such  a  silken  skin  must  have  been  as  subtle  and  as 
penetrating  as  the  scent  of  daturas.  Her  chest,  indeed  her 
whole  body  was  appallingly  thin,  but  the  little  hands  and  feet 
were  bewitchingly  small,  a  sign  of  unusual  nervous  power 
and  of  an  organization  capable  of  endurance. 

A  fierce  pride  blended  these  diabolical  imperfections  and 
divine  beauties  into  harmony,  in  spite  of  discords;  the  un- 
daunted spirit  housed  in  the  feeble  body  looked  forth  from 
her  eyes.  Once  having  seen  the  child,  it  was  impossible  to 
forget  her.  Nature  had  meant  to  fashion  a  woman,  but  the 
circumstances  of  conception  had  given  her  a  boy's  face  and 
figure.  At  sight  of  the  strange  girl,  a  poet  would  have  given 
her  Yemen  for  her  native  land  and  Arabian  efreets  and 
genii  for  her  kin.  NOT  was  La  Pechina's  outward  appearance 
misleading.  She  had  a  spirit  which  matched  her  eyes  of  fire, 
the  quick  wit  suggested  by  the  lips  set  with  the  brilliants  of 
bewitching  teeth;  she  had  thoughts  that  fitted  her  queenly 
brow,  the  equine  fury  of  the  nostrils  that  seemed  ready  to 
neigh  at  any  moment.  Love,  as  it  springs  into  being  amid 
burning  sands  and  the  deserts,  shook  the  pulses  of  the  heart 
of  twenty  years  in  the  thirteen-year-old  Montenegrin  girl ;  it 
was  with  her  as  with  her  snowy  mountain  ranges,  summer 
had  come  upon  her  before  the  spring  flowers  had  had  time  to 
bloom. 


THE  PEASANTRY  189 

By  this  time  observing  minds  will  understand  how  it  was 
that  La  Pechina,  breathing  out  passion  at  every  pore,  should 
stir  the  sluggish  fancies  of  depraved  natures.  At  table  your 
month  waters  at  the  sight  of  certain  fruits,  pitted,  contorted, 
covered  with  dark  specks ;  the  gourmet  knows  that  under  such 
a  rind  Nature  has  hidden  her  cunningest  savors  and  perfume. 
Why,  when  every  one  else  in  the  valley  pitied  La  Pechina  for 
an  ill-grown  weakling,  should  a  clod-pate  like  Nicolas  Ton- 
sard  have  set  his  choice  on  a  creature  worthy  of  a  poet  ?  Why 
should  Eigou,  in  his  old  age,  desire  her  with  the  heat  of 
youth?  Which  of  these  two  was  young  or  old?  Was  the 
young  peasant  as  sated  as  the  old  money-lender?  How  was  it 
that  both  extremes  of  life  united  in  one  sinister  caprice?  Is 
exhausted  vigor  like  the  first  beginnings  of  strength  ?  Men's 
vices  are  unfathomable  depths  guarded  by  sphinxes,  and  ques- 
tions to  which  there  are  no  answers  almost  always  stand  at 
the  beginning  and  end  of  devious  ways. 

It  may  now  be  imagined  how  it  was  that  the  exclamation 
Piccina!  broke  from  the  Countess  when  she  first  saw  Gene- 
vieve  by  the  roadside  in  the  previous  year,  a  child  in  a  maze 
of  wonder  at  the  sight  of  the  carriage  and  a  lady  inside  it 
dressed  like  Mme.  de  Montcornet.  And  it  was  this  girl,  so 
nearly  one  of  Nature's  failures  in  the  making,  who  now  loved 
with  all  the  energy  of  her  Montenegrin  nature.  She  loved  the 
tall,  handsome,  noble-hearted  forester,  as  children  of  her  age 
can  love  when  they  love,  that  is  to  say  with  a  frenzy  of  child- 
ish desire,  with  all  the  force  of  their  youth,  with  the  devotion 
which  sows  the  seeds  of  divine  romance  in  a  virgin  soil.  Cath- 
erine's coarse  hand  had  smitten  the  most  responsive  strings 
of  a  harp  strained  to  breaking.  To  dance  under  Michaud's 
eyes !  To  go  to  the  saloon  at  Soulanges  !  To  engrave  herself 
upon  the  memory  of  this  idolized  master !  What  thoughts 
were  these  to  drop  into  that  volcanic  brain?  What  was  this 
but  to  fling  live  coals  upon  straw  lying  out  in  the  August  sun  ? 

"No,  Catherine,"  said  La  Pechina.  "No,  I  am  an  ugly, 
puny  thing.  I  shall  have  to  sit  in  a  corner  and  be  an  old  maid 
all  alone  in  the  world  ;  that  is  my  fate." 

"Men  like  peaked-looking  girls,"  Catherine  declared.  "Look 


190  THE  PEASANTRY 

here  at  me!"  she  went  on,  holding  out  both  arms.  "There 
is  Godain,  a  regular  shrimp,  has  taken  a  fancy  to  me ;  so  has 
that  little  fellow  Charles  that  goes  ahout  with  the  Count.  But 
young  Lupin  is  shy  of  me.  I  tell  you  again,  it  is  the  little 
men  that  fall  in  love  with  me  and  say  'What  a  fine  girl !'  at 
Ville-aux-Fayes  or  Soulanges.  Now  all  the  tall,  fine-looking 
men  will  fall  in  love  with  you." 

"Oh,  Catherine,  really  ?  is  that  true  ?"  cried  La  Pechina  in 
an  ecstasy. 

"Why,  it  is  as  true  as  this,  that  Nicolas,  the  finest  fellow 
in  the  neighborhood,  is  over  head  and  ears  in  love  with  you. 
He  dreams  of  you,  and  gets  low  about  you,  and  all  the  girls 
in  the  place  are  in  love  with  him.  He  is  a  mettled  lad ! — If 
you  put  on  a  white  frock  and  yellow  ribbons,  you  will  be  the 
handsomest  girl  in  the  room  at  Socquard's,  at  the  feast  of 
Our  Lady,  when  all  the  grand  folk  of  Ville-aux-Fayes  are 
there !  Look  here,  will  you  come  ? — Wait  a  bit,  I  was  cutting 
grass  yonder  for  our  cows.  I  have  a  drop  of  spiced  wine  in 
my  gourd;  Socquard  gave  it  me  this  morning,"  she  went 
on,  seeing  in  La  Pechina  eyes  the  excited  look  that  every  wo- 
man understands;  "I  am  a  good-natured  one,  we  will  go 
shares  at  it.  You  will  fancy  that  some  one  is  in  love  with 
you." 

As  they  talked  Nicolas  came  stealing  towards  them,  picking 
out  patches  of  thick  grass  to  step  upon,  creeping  noiselessly 
till  he  reached  the  trunk  of  a  huge  oak-tree  near  the  place 
where  his  sister  had  deposited  La  Pechina.  Catherine's  eyes, 
always  looking  about  her,  lighted  at  last  on  Nicolas  as  she 
went  for  the  spiced  wine. 

"There !  you  taks  the  first  pull,"  said  she. 

"It  burns !"  exclaimed  Genevieve,  handing  back  the  gourd 
after  a  couple  of  sips. 

"There,  you  silly !"  retorted  Catherine,  as  she  emptied  the 
rustic  flask,  "that  is  the  way !  It  is  as  if  a  ray  of  sunlight 
shone  in  your  inside." 

"And  here  am  I  that  ought  to  have  taken  the  milk  to  Mile. 
Gaillard  !"  cried  La  Pechina.  "Nicolas  scared  me " 


THE  PEASANTRY  191 

"So  you  don't  like  Nicolas?" 

"No,  I  don't/'  answered  La  Pechina.  "What  makes  him 
hunt  me  about?  There  are  plenty  of  creatures  that  would 
be  glad  of  him." 

"But  suppose  that  he  likes  you  better  than  any  one  else  in 
the  valley,  child " 

"I  am  sorry  for  him,"  said  La  Pechina. 

"It  is  plain  that  you  do  not  know  him/'  returned  the  older 
girl. 

The  ominous  words  were  hardly  uttered  before  Catherine 
Tonsard  sprang  upon  La  Pechina,  caught  her  by  the  waist,  flung 
her  flat  upon  the  grass  and  held  her  down,  so  that  she  had  no 
power  to  extricate  herself  from  her  perilous  position.  At 
the  sight  of  her  loathed  persecutor,  Genevieve.  shrieked  with 
all  her  might,  and  directed  a  kick  in  the  stomach  at  Nicolas 
which  sent  him  reeling  five  paces  back;  then  like  an  acrobat 
she  wriggled  round  so  deftly  that  she  defeated  Catherine's 
calculations  and  got  up  to  run  away.  But  Catherine,  still  on 
the  ground,  reached  out  an  arm  and  clutched  her  by  the  foot, 
and  La  Pechina  fell  heavily  headlong  forwards.  This  ugly 
fall  put  a  stop  to  the  brave  girl's  incessant  cries.  Nicolas, 
who  had  recovered  himself  in  spite  of  the  violence  of  the 
blow,  came  up  in  a  towering  rage  and  tried  to  seize  his  victim. 
The  child's  head  was  heavy  with  the  wine,  but  in  this  strait 
she  caught  Nicolas  by  the  throat  and  held  him  in  an  iron 
grip. 

"She  is  choking  me !  .  .  .  Catherine !  help !"  cried 
Nicolas,  with  difficulty  making  his  voice  audible. 

La  Pechina  shrieked  aloud.  Catherine  tried  to  stop  the 
sounds  by  putting  a  hand  over  her  mouth,  but  the  child  bit 
her  till  the  blood  came.  At  that  very  moment  Blondet  and 
the  Countess  and  the  cure  appeared  on  the  outskirts  of  the 
wood. 

"Here  come  the  gentry  from  the  Aigues,"  said  Catherine, 
helping  Genevieve  to  rise. 

"Do  you  want  to  live  ?"  said  Nicolas  Tonsard  hoarsely. 

"And  if  I  do?"  said  La  Pechina. 


192  THE  PEASANTRY 

"Tell  them  that  we  were  romping  and  I  will  forgive  you," 
said  Nicolas  with  a  scowl. 

"Are  you  going  to  say  that,  you  cat  ?"  insisted  Catherine, 
with  a  glance  more  terrific  than  Nicolas'  murderous  threat. 

<fYes,  if  you  will  let  me  alone,"  said  La  Pechina.  "Anyhow 
I  shall  not  go  out  again  without  my  scissors." 

"You  hold  your  tongue  or  I  will  chuck  you  into  the 
Avonne,"  said  Catherine  savagely. 

"You  are  wretches !"  cried  the  cure.  "You  deserve  to  be 
arrested  and  sent  up  for  trial  for  this." 

"Oh,  as  to  that,  what  do  some  of  you  do  in  your  drawing- 
rooms  ?"  asked  Nicolas,  staring  at  the  Countess  and  Blondet, 
who  quailed.  "You  play  there,  don't  you?  All  right,  the 
fields  are  our  playground,  and  you  cannot  always  be  at  work ; 
we  were  playing.  You  ask  my  sister  and  La  Pechina." 

"What  can  you  da  when  it  comes  to  blows  if  this  is  the  way 
you  play?"  exclaimed  Blondet. 

Nicolas  looked  at  Blondet  with  deadly  hate  in  his  eyes. 

"Speak  up !"  said  Catherine,  taking  La  Pechina  by  the 
forearm  and  gripping  it  till  she  left  a  blue  bracelet  of 
bruises  round  it.  "We  were  having  a  game,  weren't  we? " 

"Yes,  my  lady,  we  were  having  a  game,"  said  La  Pechina. 
The  child's  whole  strength  was  exhausted;  she  stood  limp 
and  drooping  as  if  she  were  about  to  faint. 

"You  hear  that,  my  lady,"  said  Catherine  brazenly,  with 
a  glance  that  between  woman  and  woman  is  like  a  stab. 

She  took  her  brother's  arm  and  the  pair  walked  off  to- 
gether. They  knew  quite  well  what  ideas  they  had  given  the 
three  personages  behind  them.  Twice  Nicolas  looked  round; 
twice  he  encountered  Blondet's  eyes.  The  literary  man  was 
scanning  the  tall,  broad-shouldered  rascal.  Nicolas  stood  five 
feet  eight  inches  high;  he  had  crisp  black  hail,  a  high  color, 
his  face  was  good-tempered  enough,  but  there  was  significant 
lines  about  the  lips  and  mouth  that  suggested  the  cruelty 
peculiar  to  lust  and  idleness.  Catherine  swayed  her  white- 
and- blue-striped  skirts  as  she  went  with  a  sort  of  vicious 
coquetry. 


THE  PEASANTRY  193 

"Cain  and  his  wife,"  said  Blondet,  turning  to  the  cure. 

"You  do  not  know  how  well  your  words  have  hit  the  mark," 
returned  the  Abbe  Brossette. 

"Oh!  M.  le  Cure,  what  will  they  do  to  me?"  cried  La 
Pechina,  as  soon  as  the  brother  and  sister  were  out  of  ear-shot. 

The  Countess'  face  was  as  white  as  her  handkerchief.  The 
whole  thing  had  been  a  great  shock  to  her,  so  great  that  she 
heard  neither  La  Pechina,  nor  the  cure,  nor  Blondet. 

"This  would  drive  one  from  an  earthly  paradise,"  she  said 
at  last;  "but  of  all  things  let  us  save  this  little  one  from 
their  clutches." 

"You  were  right,"  Blondet  said  in  a  low  voice  meant  only 
for  the  Countess.  "The  child  is  a  whole  romance — a  romance 
in  flesh  and  blood." 

The  Montenegrin  girl  had  reached  a  point  when  body  and 
soul  seem  to  smoke  with  the  unquenched  fires  of  wrath  which 
have  put  the  utmost  strain  on  every  faculty,  physical  and 
mental. 

There  is  an  inexpressible  and  supreme  human  splendor 
which  only  breaks  forth  under  the  pressure  of  some  high- 
wrought  mood  of  struggle  or  of  victory,  of  love  or  martyrdom. 
She  had  left  home  that  morning  in  a  frock  of  a  material  of 
narrow  brown-and-yellow  stripes,  with  a  little  frill  at  the 
throat  that  she  had  risen  early  to  pleat  into  her  dress;  and 
now  she  stood  as  yet  unconscious  of  the  disorder  of  her  earth- 
stained  garments  or  her  torn  frill.  Her  hair  swayed  down 
over  her  face,  she  felt  for  her  comb ;  but  with  that  first  dawn 
of  dismay  Michaud  appeared  upon  the  scene;  he  also-  had 
heard  the  cries.  All  La  Pechina' s  energy  returned  at  once  at 
the  sight  of  her  god. 

"He  did  not  so  much  as  lay  a  finger  on  me,  M.  Michaud !" 

That  cry  and  its  accompanying  glance  and  gesture,  which 
spoke  more  eloquently  than  the  words,  told  Blondet  and  the 
cure  in  one  moment  more  than  Mme.  Michaud  had  told  the 
Countess  of  the  strange  girl's  passion  for  the  head-forester, 
who  was  blind  to  it. 

"The  wretch !"  exclaimed  Michaud ;  and  acting  on  an  inv 


194  THE  PEASANTRY 

pulse  of  impotent  wrath  which  takes  the  fool  and  the  wise 
alike  at  unawares,  he  shook  his  fist  in  the  direction  of  Nicolas, 
whose  tall  figure  darkened  the  wood-paths  into  which  he  had 
plunged  with  his  sister. 

"Then  you  were  not  playing  after  all/'  commented  the 
Abbe  Brossette,  with  a  keen  glance  at  La  Pechina. 

"Do  not  tease  her,"  said  the  Countess.    "Let  us  go  home." 

La  Pechina,  spent  though  she  was,  drew  from  the  force  of 
her  passion  sufficient  strength  to  walk — under  the  eyes  of  her 
adored  master.  The  Countess  followed  immediately  behind 
Michaud,  along  a  footpath  known  only  to  keepers  and  poach- 
ers, and  so  narrow  that  two  could  not  walk  abreast  in  it.  It 
was  a  short  cut  to  the  Avonne  gate. 

"Michaud,"  the  lady  began,  when  they  had  come  halfway 
through  the  wood,  "the  neighborhood  must  be  rid  somehow 
or  other  of  this  good-for-nothing  scamp.  This  child  is  per- 
haps in  danger  of  her  life." 

"To  begin  with,"  returned  Michaud,  "Genevieve  shall  never 
leave  the  lodge.  My  wife  shall  take  Vatel's  nephew  into  the 
house;  he  keeps  the  walks  in  order  in  the  park.  We  will  re- 
place him  by  a  young  fellow  who  comes  from  near  my  wife's 
home,  for  after  this  we  ought  to  have  no  one  about  the  Aigues 
whom  we  cannot  trust.  With  Gounod  in  the  house,  and  Cor- 
nevin,  Olympe's  old  foster-father,  the  cows  will  be  well  looked 
after,  and  La  Pechina  shall  never  go  out  by  herself  again." 

"I  shall  ask  the  Count  to  make  good  the  extra  expense  to 
you,"  said  the  lady ;  "but  this  will  not  rid  us  of  Nicolas.  How 
can  it  be  done?" 

"Oh,  that  is  quite  simple ;  there  is  a  way  ready  made.  Nic- 
olas will  have  to  go  before  the  examining  committee  directly. 
Instead  of  interfering  to  get  him  off,  as  the  Tonsards  expect 
the  General  to  do,  he  has  only  to  give  the  authorities  a 
hint " 

"I  will  go  myself  if  need  be  to  see  my  cousin  Casteran  at 
the  prefecture,"  said  the  Countess,  "but  meanwhile,  I  am 
afraid- 

These  few  wprds  were  exchanged  at  the  point  where  several 


THE  PEASANTRY  195 

paths  met  in  a  circle.  The  Countess  climbed  the  bank  by  the 
ditch  side,  and,  in  spite  of  herself,  a  cry  broke  from  her. 
Michaud  went  to  her  assistance,  thinking  that  she  had  re- 
ceived a  scratch  from  a  bit  of  dead  thorn,  but  he  too  shud- 
dered at  the  sight  that  met  his  eyes. 

Marie  and  Bonnebault,  sitting  on  the  bank  side,  were  ap- 
parently chatting  together ;  but  evidently  the  pair  had  hidden 
themselves  for  purposes  of  eavesdropping.  They  had  heard 
people  come  up  in  the  forest,  had  recognized  the  voices  of  the 
gentry,  and  left  their  sentinel's  post. 

Bonnebault,  a  thin  lanky  youth,  had  served  six  years  in  a 
cavalry  regiment.  Some  few  months  ago  he  had  been  dis- 
charged for  good  from  the  army  for  bad  conduct;  he  was 
enough  to  spoil  the  best  of  regiments ;  and  since  then  he  had 
been  hanging  about  Conches.  With  a  pair  of  moustaches,  a 
tuft  of  beard  on  the  chin,  a  certain  presence  and  carriage 
that  a  soldier  learns  in  barracks  and  drill,  he  had  turned  the 
heads  of  all  the  peasant  girls  in  the  valley.  Bonnebault  vore 
his  hair,  soldier  fashion,  clipped  close  to  the  back  of  the  head, 
frizzed  about  the  face,  and  brushed  up  jauntily  behind  on 
the  temples.  He  tilted  his  foraging  cap  knowingly  over  one 
ear.  Indeed,  compared  with  peasants  in  rags  and  tatters 
like  Mouche  and  Fourchon,  he  was  a  glorious  creature  in  his 
linen  trousers,  leather  boots,  and  short  jacket.  This  attire, 
assumed  since  his  discharge,  smacked  somewhat  of  half-pay 
and  a  countryman's  life ;  but  the  cock  of  the  valley  had  better 
clothes  for  high  days  and  holidays.  He  lived,  it  may  be  said 
at  once,  on  his  sweethearts,  and  found  his  means  barely  suf- 
ficient for  his  amusement,  potations,  and  various  methods 
of  going  to  the  devil,  a  necessary  consequence  of  hanging 
about  the  Cafe  de  la  Paix. 

There  was  something  indescribably  sinister  in  the  rascal's 
round,  featureless  countenance,  though  at  first  sight  he  looked 
not  unpleasing.  He  was  cross-eyed;  that  is,  he  did  not  ex- 
actly squint,  but  his  eyes  sometimes  "went  different  ways,"  to 
borrow  a  phrase  from  the  studio,  and  this  optical  defect,  slight 
though  it  was,  gave  him  an  underhand  expression  which  made 
you  feel  uncomfortable;  and  the  more  so  because  a  twitch  of 


196  THE  PEASANTRY 

the  forehead  and  eyebrows  accompanied  these  movements  of 
the  eyes — a  revelation  of  a  certain  inherent  baseness  and  an 
innate  tendency  to  go  to  the  bad. 

Of  cowardice,  as  of  courage,  there  be  many  kinds.  Bonne- 
bault,  who  would  have  fought  on  the  field  with  the  bravest, 
was  pusillanimous  before  his  vices  and  unable  to  resist  his 
fancies.  He  was  as  lazy  as  a  lizard,  though  he  could  be  active 
enough  when  he  chose;  he  had  no  sense  of  shame,  he  was 
proud  and  yet  base,  and  the  man  who  could  do  anything  and 
did  nothing,  the  "breaker  of  heads  and  hearts,"  to  use  a  sol- 
dier's phrase,  found  his  sole  delight  in  mischief  and  worse. 
A  character  of  this  kind  is  as  dangerous  an  example  in  a 
quiet  country  place  as  in  a  regiment. 

Bonnebault's  aim,  like  Tonsard's  and  Fourchon's,  was  to 
live  in  comfort  and  to  do  nothing;  and  to  that  end  he  had 
"laid  himself  out,"  as  Vermichel  and  Fourchon  would  say. 
By  exploiting  his  figure,  with  increasing  success,  and  his  skill 
at  billiards,  with  varying  fortune,  he  flattered  himself  that  in 
his  quality  of  prop  and  pillar  of  the  Cafe  de  la  Paix  he  should 
one  day  marry  Mile.  Aglae  Socquard,  only  daughter  of  the 
proprietor  thereof.  Socquard's  cafe  (making  due  allowance 
for  relative  position)  was  to  Soulanges  much  what  Ranelagh 
is  to  the  Boia  de  Boulogne.  To  adopt  the  career  of  a  bar- 
keeper, to  be  proprietor  of  a  dancing-saloon — 'twas  a  fine 
prospect,  a  very  marshal's  baton,  for  a  man  who  hated  work. 

Bonnebault's  habits,  life,  and  nature  were  written  in  such 
foul  characters  on  his  face  that  the  Countess  started  at  the 
sight  of  him  and  his  companion  as  if  she  had  seen  a  couple 
of  snakes.  It  was  this  shock  that  had  made  her  cry  out. 

Marie  Tonsard  was  so  infatuated  with  Bonnebault  that  for 
him  she  would  have  stolen  outright.  That  moustache,  that 
lounging  military  swagger,  that  low  bully's  air,  went  to  her 
heart  as  the  manners,  bearing,  and  air  of  a  De  Marsay  fasci- 
nate Parisian  fair.  Every  social  sphere  has  its  bright  partic- 
ular stars.  Marie  was  uneasy,  she  dismissed  Amaury,  the 
rival  coxcomb  of  the  little  town.  She  meant  to  be  Mme.  Bon- 
nebault. 


THE  PEASANTRY  197 

"Hallo  there!  hallo!  are  you  coming?"  shouted  Catherine 
and  Nicolas  in  the  distance;  they  had  caught  sight  of  the 
other  pair. 

The  shrill  cry  rang  through  the  woods  like  a  savage's  signal. 

Michaud  shuddered  at  the  sight  of  the  two  creatures  and 
bitterly  repented  his  hasty  speech.  If  Bonnebault  and  Marie 
had  overheard  the  conversation  nothing  but  mischief  would 
come  of  it.  Some  such  apparently  infinitely  trifling  matter 
was  enough  in  the  present  exasperated  condition  of  parties  to 
bring  about  a  decisive  result  even  as  upon  some  battlefield 
victory  and  defeat  have  been  decided  by  the  course  of  some 
little  stream  which  balks  the  advance  of  the  battery,  though 
a  shepherd's  lad  can  cross  it  at  a  running  jump. 

Bonnebault  took  off  his  cap  gallantly  to  the  lady,  took 
Marie's  arm,  and  swaggered  off  in  triumph. 

"That  is  the  Clef-des-Cceurs  of  the  valley,"  Michaud  whis- 
pered, using  a  nickname  of  the  French  camp  which  means 
a  Don  Juan.  "He  is  a  very  dangerous  character.  He  has  only 
to  lose  a  score  of  francs  at  billiards  and  he  would  be  ready  to 
murder  Eigou.  He  is  as  ready  for  a  crime  as  for  pleasure." 

"I  have  seen  more  than  enough  for  one  day,"  said  the 
Countess,  taking  Emile's  arm.  "Let  us  turn  back." 

She  watched  La  Pechina  go  into  the  house,  and  made  Mme. 
Michaud  a  sad  farewell  sign ;  Olympe's  dejection  had  infected 
the  Countess. 

"What  is  this,  madame?"  said  the  Abbe  Brossette.  "Do 
the  difficulties  of  doing  good  here  really  turn  you  away  from 
making  the  attempt?  For  five  years  I  have  slept  on  a  mat- 
tress and  lived  in  a  bare  unfurnished  parsonage-house,  saying 
mass  without  a  flock  to  listen  to  it,  preaching  to  an  empty 
church,  officiating  without  fees  or  supplementary  stipend;  I 
have  the  State  allowance  of  six  hundred  francs;  I  give  away 
one-third  of  it,  and  have  asked  nothing  of  his  lordship  the 
bishop — and  after  all  I  do  not  despair.  If  you  but  knew  what 
it  is  like  in  the  winter  here  you  would  feel  all  the  force  of 
those  words.  I  have  nothing  to  warm  me  but  the  thought  of 
saving  this  valley  and  winning  it  back  to  God,  It  is  not  a 


198  THE  PEASANTRY 

question  of  ourselves  alone,  madame ;  the  future  time  is  con- 
cerned. If  we  cures  are  put  here  to  say  to  the  poor,  'Know 
how  to  be  poor !'  that  is  to  say,  'Bear  your  lot  in  patience  and 
work/  it  is  no  less  our  duty  to  bid  the  wealthy  'Know  how  to 
be  rich/  which  means,  'Be  intelligently  beneficent,  fear  God, 
be  worthy  of  the  post  He  has  assigned  to  you !' 

"Well,  madame,  you  are  only  depositaries  of  wealth  and 
the  power  that  wealth  gives;  if  you  fail  to  fulfil  your  trust 
you  will  not  transmit  that  which  you  received  to  your  chil- 
dren. You  are  robbing  those  that  shall  come  after  you !  If 
you  follow  in  the  selfish  ways  of  the  cantatrice,  whose  supine- 
ness  most  surely  caused  the  evils  which  have  startled  you  by 
their  extent,  you  will  see  yet  again  the  scaffolds  on  which  your 
predecessors  died  for  the  sins  of  their  fathers.  To  do  good 
obscurely  in  some  out-of-the-way  nook,  just  as  this  Eigou, 
for  example,  is  doing  harm.  .  .  .  Ah!  God  in  Heaven 
delights  to  hear  the  prayer  that  takes  the  form  of  such  deeds 
as  these ! — If,  in  every  commune,  there  were  three  human 
beings  determined  to  do  good,  this  fair  France  of  ours  would 
be  saved  from  the  depths  towards  which  we  are  hurrying, 
dragged  down  as  we  are  by  a  creed  of  indifference  to  all  that 
does  not  directly  concern  ourselves ! — First  of  all  change  your 
lives ;  change  them  and  you  will  change  your  laws." 

Although  the  Countess  was  deeply  moved  by  this  outpour- 
ing of  truly  catholic  charity,  her  only  answer  was  the  rich 
man's  fatal  formula,  "We  shall  see,"  a  put-off  that  contains 
sufficient  promise  in  it  to  repel  any  immediate  call  upon  the 
purse,  while  it  leaves  the  speaker  free  in  future  to  fold  his 
arms  when  the  mischief  is  done,  and  to  plead  that  now  it  is 
too  late. 

Upon  this  the  Abbe  Brossette  took  leave  of  Mme.  de  Mont- 
cornet,  and  went  by  the  nearest  way  to  the  Blangy  gate. 

"Is  Belshazzar's  Feast  to  be  throughout  all  ages  the  symbol 
of  the  last  days  of  a  doomed  class,  oligarchy,  or  ruling 
power  ?"  he  asked  himself  when  he  had  made  ten  paces  on  his 
way.  "0  God,  if  it  be  Thy  holy  will  to  let  loose  the  poor  like 
a  deluge  that  there  may  be  a  new  world,  then  I  can  under- 


THE  PEASANTRY  199 

that  Thou  wouldst  abandon  the  rich  man  to  his  blind- 
ness." 

XII 

SHOWS  HOW  THE  TAVERN   IS  THE  PEOPLE'S  PARLIAMENT 

MEANWHILE,  by  screaming  at  the  top  of  her  voice,  Granny 
Tonsard  had  brought  several  people  from  Blangy,  curious  to 
know  what  could  have  happened  at  the  Grand-I-Vert.  Blangy 
itself  was  about  as  near  to  the  tavern  as  the  Blangy  gate  of 
the  park.  Among  those  attracted  thus,  who  should  be  there 
but  old  Niseron — La  Pechina's  grandfather,  who  had  just 
rung  the  second  Angelus,  and  was  on  his  way  back  to  train  the 
last  vine-stems  on  his  last  bit  of  ground. 

All  the  honesty  left  in  the  commune  had  taken  up  its  abode 
in  the  old  vinedresser,  whose  back  was  bent  with  toil,  whose 
features  were  blanched  and  hair  whitened  with  age.  During 
the  Eevolution  he  had  been  the  president  of  the  Ville-aux- 
Fayes  Jacobin  Club  and  a  sworn  member  of  the  local  Revo- 
lutionary Committee.  Jean-Frangois  Niseron  was  composed 
of  the  stuff  of  which  Apostles  are  made.  In  years  gone  by  he 
had  been  the  very  image  of  Saint  Peter,  the  saint  whose  por- 
trait never  varies  with  any  painter's  brush ;  he  had  the  square 
forehead  of  the  man  of  the  people;  the  stiff  crisped  hair  of 
the  toiler,  the  proletarian's  muscles,  the  fisherman's  bronzed 
face,  the  powerful  nose,  the  half-satirical  mouth  that  laughs 
at  ill-luck,  and  (a  final  characteristic)  the  shoulders  of  the 
strong  man  who  will  cut  his  faggots  in  the  neighboring  wood 
and  cook  his  dinner  while  doctrinaires  are  talking  about  it. 

This  was  Niseron  as  a  man  of  forty  at  the  time  when  the 
Eevolution  broke  out,  a  man  as  hard  as  iron  and  as  honest  as 
the  day.  He  took  the  side  of  the  people,  he  put  his  faith  in 
the  Republic  with  the  first  mutterings  of  a  word  perhaps  even 
more  to  be  dreaded  than  the  idea  behind  it.  He  believed  in 
the  Republic  of  Jean-Jacques  Rousseau,  the  brotherhood  of 
man,  the  exchange  of  noble  sentiments,  the  public  recognition 


200  THE  PEASANTRY 

of  merit,  in  a  fair  field  and  no  favor,  in  a  great  many  things 
in  fact,  which,  though  quite  practicable  in  a  district  no  bigger 
than  ancient  Sparta,  became  Utopian  visions  when  the  area 
in  question  is  expanded  into  an  empire.  He  subscribed  to 
his  theories  with  his  blood ;  his  only  son  went  to  the  frontier : 
he  did  more ;  for  them  he  made  the  sacrifice  of  his  pecuniary 
interests,  that  final  immolation  of  self.  He  was  the  nephew 
and  sole  heir  of  the  old  «ure  of  Blangy,  who  died  and  left  all 
his  money  to  pretty  Arsene,  his  servant-girl;  and  though 
Niseron,  as  a  tribune,  was  all-powerful  in  the  district  and 
might  have  helped  himself  to  his  heritage,  he  respected  the 
wishes  of  the  dead,  and  accepted  the  poverty  which  came  upon 
him  as  swiftly  as  the  decadence  on  his  Republic. 

Not  a  groat,  not  a  branch  of  a  tree  belonging  to  another 
passed  into  his  hands.  If  this  sublime  Republican  could  have 
founded  a  school  the  Republic  would  have  been  accepted.  He 
declined  to  buy  the  National  lands,  denying  the  Republic  the 
right  of  confiscation.  In  response  to  the  demands  of  the  Com- 
mittee of  Public  Safety  he  was  determined  that  the  manhood 
of  the  citizens  should  work  for  the  holy  fatherland  the  mira- 
cles that  political  jugglers  tried  to  effect  with  gold  coin.  The 
man  of  antiquity  publicly  upbraided  Gaubertin  senior  with 
his  treacherous  double-dealing,  with  winking  at  corruption, 
with  picking  and  stealing.  He  roundly  rated  the  virtuous 
Mouchon,  that  Representative  of  the  People,  whose  virtue 
mainly  consisted  in  his  incapacity,  as  was  the  case  with  plenty 
of  his  like  who,  strong  with  the  might  of  a  whole  nation,  with 
absolute  command  of  the  most  enormous  political  resources 
that  ever  nation  put  at  the  disposition  of  its  rulers,  attained 
fewer  great  achievements  with  the  strength  of  a  people,  than 
a  Richelieu  with  the  weakness  of  a  king.  For  these  reasons 
Citizen  Niseron  became. a  living  reproach  to  everybody  else, 
and  before  long  the  good  soul  was  overwhelmed  and  buried 
under  the  avalanche  of  oblivion  by  the  terrible  formula, 
"Nothing  pleases  him !" — a  catchword  in  favor  with  those 
who  have  grown  fat  on  sedition. 

This  "peasant  of  the  Danube"  returned  under  his  own  roof 


THE  PEASANTRY  2&1 

at  Blangy.  He  watched  his  illusions  vanish  one  by  one,  saw 
his  Kepublic  become  an  appendage  of  the  Emperor,  and  sank 
into  penury  under  the  eyes  of  Eigou,  who  deliberately  ruined 
him  with  hypocritical  regret.  Do  you  ask  why  ?  Jean-Fran- 
gois  Niseron  would  not  take  a  penny  of  Eigou.  Eeiterated 
refusals  had  taught  the  wrongful  inheritor  of  old  Niseron's 
goods  the  depth  of  the  scorn  with  which  the  rightful  heir 
regarded  him.  And,  to  crown  all,  the  icy  contempt  had  just 
been  succeeded  by  the  fearful  threat  as  to  the  little  grand- 
daughter when  the  Abbe  Brossette  mentioned  her  to  the 
Countess. 

The  old  man  had  written  a  history  of  the  twelve  years  of 
the  Eepublic.  It  was  a  history  written  to  suit  his  own  no- 
tions; it  was  full  of  the  grandiose  traits  for  which  those 
heroic  times  will  be  remembered  for  ever.  The  good  man 
shut  his  eyes  to  all  the  scandals,  slaughter,  and  spoliation; 
he  always  dwelt  admiringly  on  the  self-sacrifice,  the  Vengeur, 
the  "patriotic  gifts,"  the  enthusiasm  of  the  people  on  the 
frontiers ;  he  went  on  with  his  dream  the  better  to  sleep. 

The  Eevolution  made  many  poets  like  old  Niseron,  poets 
who  sang  their  songs  within  our  borders  or  in  our  armies,  in 
their  inmost  souls,  in  the  broad  light  of  day,  in  many  a  deed 
done  unseen  amid  the  storm-clouds  of  those  times ;  even  as  in 
the  days  of  the  Empire  the  wounded  left  forgotten  on  the 
field  would  cry  "Long  live  the  Emperor !"  before  they  died. 
This  sublimity  is  a  part  of  the  very  nature  of  France. 

The  Abbe  Brossette  respected  Niseron's  harmless  convic- 
tions. The  old  man  in  the  simplicity  of  his  heart  had  been 
won  by  a  chance  phrase :  "The  true  Eepublic,"  the  priest  had 
said,  "is  to  be  found  in  the  Gospel."  And  the  old  Ee- 
publican  carried  the  crucifix ;  and  he  wore  the  vestment,  half- 
black,  half-red;  and  he  wa»  decorous  and  serious  in  church, 
and  he  lived  by  the  triple  functions  which  he  fulfilled,  thanks 
to  the  Abbe  Brossette,  who  tried  to  give  the  good  man  not 
a  living,  but  enough  to  keep  him  from  starving. 

The  old  Aristides  of  Blangy  said  but  little,  like  all  noble 
dupes  who  wrap  themselves  round  in  the  mantle  of  resigna- 
tion ;  but  he  never  failed  to  reprove  evil-doing,  and  the  peas- 


202  THE  PEASANTRY 

ants  feared  him  as  thieves  fear  the  police.  At  the  Grand-I- 
Vert  they  always  made  much  of  him,  but  he  did  not  go  there 
half-a-dozen  times  in  a  year.  He  would  execrate  the  lack  of 
charity  in  the  rich,  their  selfishness  revolted  him,  and  the 
peasants  always  took  this  fibre  in  his  nature  for  something 
that  he  had  in  common  with  them.  They  used  to  say,  "Old 
Niseron  is  no  friend  to  the  rich  folk,  so  he  is  one  of  us ;"  and 
a  noble  life  received  by  way  of  civic  crown  the  comment, 
"Good  Daddy  Niseron ;  there  is  not  a  better  man !"  He  was 
not  seldom  called  in  to  settle  disputes,  and  in  person  realized 
the  magic  words,  "the  village  elder." 

In  spite  of  his  dire  poverty  he  was  exceedingly  tidy  in  per- 
son. He  always  wore  breeches,  thick  striped  stockings,  iron- 
bound  shoes,  the  coat  with  big  buttons  that  once  was  almost 
a  national  costume,  and  the  broad-brimmed  felt  hat — such  as 
old  peasants  wear  even  now.  On  working  days  he  appeared 
in  .a  short  blue  jacket  so  threadbare  that  you  could  see  the 
manner  of  its  weaving.  There  was  a  noble  something  that 
cannot  be  described  in  his  face  and  bearing,  the  pride  of  a 
man  who  feels  that  he  is  free  and  worthy  of  his  freedom. 
In  short,  he  wore  clothes,  and  did  not  go  about  in  rags. 

"What  has  been  happening  out  of  the  common,  granny? 
I  heard  you  from  the  steeple,"  he  remarked. 

Then  the  old  man  heard  the  whole  story  of  Vatel's  frus- 
tiated  attempt;  every  one  spoke  at  once  after  the  fashion  of 
country  folk. 

"If  you  did  not  cut  the  tree,  Vatel  was  in  the  wrong;  but 
if  you  did  cut  the  tree,  you  have  done  two  bad  things,"  pro- 
nounced Father  Niseron. 

"Just  take  a  drop  of  wine!"  put  in  Tonsard,  offering  a 
brimming  glass. 

"Shall  we  set  off?"  asked  Vermichel,  looking  at  Brunei 

"Yes.  We  can  do  without  Daddy  Fourchon;  we  can 
take  the  deputy-mayor  from  Conches  with  us  instead," 
said  Brunet.  "Go  on  ahead,  I  have  a  paper  to  leave  at  the 
chateau;  Daddy  Rigou  has  gained  his  case,  and  I  must  give 
notice  of  judgment."  And  Brunet,  fortified  by  a  couple 


THE  PEASANTRY  303 

of  nips  of  brandy,  remounted  his  gray  mare,  with  a  good-day 
to  Father  Niseron,  for  everybody  in  the  valley  looked  up  to 
the  old  man. 

No  science,  nay,  no  practised  statistician,  can  obtain 
statistics  of  the  more  than  telegraphic  speed  with  which  news 
spreads  through  country  districts,  no  account  of  the  ways  by 
which  it  crosses  waste  wildernesses  (the  standing  reproach 
of  French  administrators  and  French  capital).  It  is  a  bit  of 
well-known  contemporary  history  that  a  banker  prince  rode 
his  horses  to  death  between  the  field  of  Waterloo  and  Paris 
(for  he,  needless  to  say,  was  gaining  what  the  Emperor  had 
lost — to  wit,  a  kingdom),  yet  after  all  he  only  reached  the 
capital  a  few  hours  ahead  of  the  disastrous  tidings.  So 
within  an  hour  of  the  time  when  Granny  Tonsard  fell  out 
with  Vatel  a  good  many  regular  customers  had  dropped  in 
at  the  Grand-I-Vert. 

The  first  to  come  was  Courtecuisse.  You  would  have  found 
it  hard  to  recognize  in  him  the  jolly  gamekeeper,  the  fat 
Friar  John,  for  whom  it  may  be  •  remembered  his  wife  had 
boiled  the  coffee  and  milk  on  a  certain  morning  not  so  very 
long  back.  He  looked  years  older,  he  had  grown  thin  and 
wan,  a  dreadful  object-lesson  to  eyes  that  took  no  heed  of  the 
warning. 

"He  had  a  mind  to  go  up  higher  than  the  ladder,"  so  it 
was  said  when  anybody  pitied  the  ex-keeper  and  blamed 
Rigou ;  "he  wanted  to  turn  master." 

And,  indeed,  when  Courtecuisse  bought  the  Bdchelerie  he 
had  meant  to  "turn  master,"  and  had  boasted  as  much.  His 
wife  went  out  collecting  manure.  Before  daybreak  she  and 
Courtecuisse  were  at  work  digging  their  richly-manured  gar- 
den plot,  which  brought  in  several  successive  crops  in  the 
year,  and  yet  they  only  just  managed  to  pay  Rigou  the  in- 
terest due  on  the  balance  of  the  purchase-money.  Their 
daughter  in  service  at  Auxerre  sent  her  wages  to  her  father 
and  mother;  but  do  what  they  might,  and  in  spite  of  this 
help,  the  balance  was  now  due,  and  they  had  not  a  brass 

farthing. 

VOL.  10—39 


204  THE  PEASANTRY 

Mme.  Courtecuisse  had  been  used  to  indulge  now  and  again 
in  a  bottle  of  spiced  wine  and  sugared  toast.  Now  she  drank 
nothing  but  water.  Courtecuisse  scarcely  trusted  himself  in- 
side the  Grand-I-Vert  lest  he  should  be  drawn  into  laying  out 
three-halfpence.  He  was  no  longer  a  person  to  be  courted. 
He  had  lost  his  free  nips  at  the  tavern,  and  like  all  fools  he 
whined  about  ingratitude.  In  fact  he  was  going  the  way  of  all 
peasants  bitten  with  the  wish  to  own  land;  he  was  ill-nour- 
ished, and  found  the  work  heavier  and  heavier,  as  the  food 
grew  less. 

"Courtecuisse  has  put  too  much  in  bricks  and  mortar,"  said 
the  envious.  "He  should  have  waited  till  he  was  master  be- 
fore he  began  to  plant  wall-fruit." 

The  simpleton  had  made  improvements,  brought  the  three 
acres  sold  by  Kigou  into  high  cultivation,  and  lived  in  fear 
of  being  turned  out !  The  man  who  once  wore  leather  shoes 
and  sportsman's  gaiters  now  went  about  in  sabots,  and 
dressed  no  better  than  old  Fourchon.  And  he  laid  the  blame 
of  his  hard  life  on  the  gentry  at  the  Aigues !  Gnawing  care 
had  made  the  once  chubby,  jovial  little  man  so  dull  and  sullen 
that  he  looked  like  a  victim  of  slow  poison  or  some  incurable 
disease. 

"What  can  be  the  matter  with  you,  M.  Courtecuisse  ?  Has 
some  one  cut  your  tongue  out?"  asked  Tonsard,  when  the 
tale  of  the  recent  encounter  had  been  told  and  the  newcomer 
was  silent. 

"That  would  be  a  pity,"  said  La  Tonsard;  "he  has  no  call 
to  complain  of  the  midwife  who  cut  his  tongue-string;  she 
made  a  good  job  of  it." 

"Thinking  of  ways  to  pay  off  M.  Rigou  freezes  your  gab," 
complained  the  old  man,  grown  so  much  older  in  so  short  a 
time. 

"Pooh !"  said  Granny  Tonsard.  "You  have  a  good-looking 
girl;  she  will  be  seventeen  now;  if  she  behaves  wisely  you  will 
easily  settle  with  that  old  scribbler  yonder — 

"We  sent  her  away  to  old  Mme.  Mariotte  at  Auxerre  two 
years  ago  on  purpose  to  keep  her  out  of  harm's  way.  I  would 
sooner  die  than  let  her " 


THE  PEASANTRY  205 

"What  a  fool !"  put  in  Tonsard.  "Look  at  my  girls :  are 
they  dead?  Any  one  who  should  say  that  they  were  not  as 
steady  as  stone  images  would  have  to  answer  for  it  to  my 
gun." 

"It  would  be  very  hard  to  have  to  go  out  of  the  place  yon- 
der !"  cried  Courtecuisse,  shaking  his  head.  "I  had  sooner 
some  one  paid  me  for  shooting  down  one  of  those  arminacs!" 

"Oh,  a  girl  would  do  better  to  save  her  father  than  to  keep 
her  virtue  till  it  mildews,"  retorted  Tonsard.  He  felt  a  little 
sharp  tap  on  his  shoulder  as  he  spoke.  It  was  Father  Nise- 
ron. 

"That  was  not  well  said,"  began  the  old  man.  "A  father 
is  the  guardian  of  the  honor  of  his  family.  It  is  just  such 
doings  that  draw  down  contempt  on  us,  and  they  say  that 
the  people  are  not  fit  to  have  liberty.  The  people  ought  to  set 
the  rich  an  example  of  honor  and  civic  virtues.  You  all  sell 
yourselves  to  Eigou  for  gold ;  every  one  of  you !  When  you 
do  not  give  him  your  daughters,  you  sell  your  own  manhood ! 
That  is  bad." 

"Just  see  what  Short  Boots  has  come  to !"  said  Tonsard. 

"Just  see  what  I  have  come  to !"  returned  old  Niseron.  "I 
sleep  in  peace ;  there  are  no  thorns  in  my  pillow." 

"Let  him  talk,  Tonsard,"  said  La  Tonsard  in  her  husband's 
ear.  "You  know  very  well  that  that  is  his  crotchet,  poor 
dear !" 

Bonnebault  and  Marie,  and  Catherine  and  her  brother  all 
came  in  at  that  moment.  All  four  were  in  a  bad  humor 
over  the  failure  of  Nicolas'  scheme,  and  Michaud's  proposal 
overheard  by  them  had  been  the  last  straw.  So  Nicolas, 
once  under  the  paternal  roof,  broke  into  a  frightful  outburst 
against  the  Aigues  and  the  whole  Michaud  establishment. 

"Here  is  the  harvest  beginning !  Well,  now,  I  am  not  go- 
ing away  until  I  have  lighted  my  pipe  at  their  ricks,"  he 
shouted,  bringing  down  his  fist  with  a  bang  on  the  table  at 
which  he  sat. 

"There  is  no  need  to  yelp  like  that  before  anybody  and 
everybody/'  said  Godain,  pointing  to  old  Niseron. 


206  THE  PEASANTRY 

"If  he  were  to  tell  tales,  I  would  wring  his  neck  like  a 
chicken's,"  put  in  Catherine.  "He  has  had  his  day :  a  meddle- 
some old  fault-finder!  Virtuous  they  call  him!  It  is  his 
temperament,  that  is  all !" 

It  was  a  strange  and  curious  sight  to  see  all  the  upturned 
faces  of  the  folk  gathered  together  in  that  den,  while  Granny 
Tonsard  stood  sentinel  at  the  door,  lest  any  one  should  over- 
hear the  talk  over  the  liquor. 

But  the  most  alarming  among  all  those  faces  belonged  to 
Godain,  Catherine's  wooer;  the  most  alarming  and  yet  the 
least  striking  face  in  the  tavern.  Godain  was  a  miser  who 
lacked  gold — a  miser,  that  is,  of  the  most  pitiless  kind;  does 
not  the  hoardless  miser  take  precedence  of  the  miser  who 
broods  over  his  treasure?  The  latter  looks  within  himself, 
but  the  other  gazes  into  the  future  with  a  dreadful  fixity. 
This  Godain  was  a  type  which  seemed  to  represent  the  most 
numerous  class  among  the  peasantry.  Godain  was  short,  so 
short  that  he  had  been  exempted  from  military  service.  He 
was  naturally  thin,  and  toil  and  the  dull  frugality  which 
saps  the  life  of  such  insatiable  workers  as  Courtecuisse  had 
still  further  dried  him  up.  His  little  meagre  face  was  lighted 
by  two  yellow  eyes,  streaked  with  green  threads,  and  specked 
with  brown.  The  greed  of  gain,  of  gain  at  any  price,  which 
shone  in  them,  was  steeped  in  a  cold-blooded  sensuality;  de- 
sires once  hot  and  vehement  had  cooled  and  hardened  like 
lava.  The  skin  was  strained  tightly  over  the  brown,  mummy- 
like  temples,  the  hairs  of  a  scanty  beard  grew  here  and  there 
among  the  wrinkles  like  cornstalks  among  the  furrows.  Noth- 
ing wrung  sweat  from  Godain;  he  reabsorbed  his  substance. 
The  sinewy,  indefatigable  hands  like  hairy  claws  might  have 
been  made  of  old  seasoned  wood.  He  was  barely  seven-and- 
twenty,  yet  there  were  white  threads  already  among  the  rusty 
black  hair. 

As  to  dress,  he  wore  a  blouse,  which  gave  glimpses  through 
the  fastening  of  a  coarse  linen  shirt,  which  to  all  appearance 
he  only  changed  once  a  month,  and  washed  himself  in  the 
Thune.  His  sabots  were  mended  with  scraps  of  old  iron.  It 


THE  PEASANTRY  207 

was  impossible  to  pronounce  on  the  original  material  of  his 
trousers,  for  the  darns  and  patches  which  covered  it  were 
infinite.  Finally,  he  wore  a  shocking  cap,  evidently  picked 
up  on  the  doorstep  of  some  tradesman's  house  in  Ville-aux- 
Fayes. 

Godain  was  clear-sighted  enough  to  see  the  value  of  tha 
elements  of  latent  fortune  in  Catherine.  He  meant  to  suc- 
ceed Tonsard  at  the  Grand-I-Vert,  and  with  that  end  in  view 
he  put  forth  all  his  cunning,  all  his  power,  to  capture  her. 
He  promised  her  that  she  should  be  rich,  he  promised 
that  she  should  have  all  the  license  which  her  mother  had 
taken;  before  he  had  finished  he  had  promised  his  future 
father-in-law  a  heavy  rent  for  his  tavern,  five  hundred  francs 
a  year  until  the  place  was  paid  for ;  Godain  had  had  an  inter- 
view with  Brunet,  and  on  the  heads  of  that  interview  he 
hoped  to  pay  in  stamped  paper.  As  a  journeyman  agricul- 
tural implement  maker,  this  gnome  would  work  for  the 
plow-wright  when  work  was  plentiful;  but  he  took  the 
highly-paid  overtime  jobs.  He  had  invested  some  eighteen 
hundred  francs  with  Gaubertin,  but  not  a  soul  knew  of  the 
money,  and  he  lived  like  a  miserably  poor  man,  lodging  in 
a  garret  in  his  master's  house,  and  gleaning  at  harvest-time, 
but  he  carried  Gaubertin's  receipt  about  him,  sewn  into  the 
band  of  his  Sunday  trousers,  and  saw  it  renewed  each  year; 
each  year  the  amount  was  a  little  larger,  swelled  by  his  sav- 
ings and  the  interest. 

"Eh!  what's  that  to  me?"  shouted  Nicolas,  in  reply  to 
Godain's  prudent  observation.  "If  I  am  to  go  for  a  soldier, 
I  would  sooner  that  the  sawdust  drank  my  blood  at  once, 
than  give  it  drop  by  drop. — And  I  will  rid  the  neighborhood 
of  one  of  these  arminacs  which  the  devil  has  let  loose  upon 
us."  And  with  that  he  told  the  tale  of  the  so-called  plot  which 
Michaud  had  woven  against  him. 

"Where  would  you  have  France  look  for  her  soldiers?"  the 
old  man  asked  gravely.  During  the  silence  that  followed  on 
Nicolas'  hideous  threat  he  had  risen  and  faced  the  young 
man. 


208  THE  PEASANTRY 

"A  fellow  serves  his  time  in  the  army  and  comes  back 
again,"  said  Bonnebault,  curling  his  moustache. 

Old  Niseron  saw  that  all  the  black  sheep  of  the  district 
had  come  together;  he  shook  his  head  and  went  out,  leaving 
a  farthing  with  Mme.  Tonsard  to  pay  for  his  glass  of  wine. 
There  was  a  general  stir  of  satisfaction  among  those  who  sat 
drinking  as  soon  as  the  good  man  had  set  foot  on  the  steps. 
It  would  have  been  plain  to  any  onlooker  that  they  all  felt 
constraint  in  the  presence  of  this  embodiment  of  their  con- 
science. 

"Well;  now,  what  do  you  say  to  all  this,  hey !  Short  Boots  ?" 
asked  Vaudoyer,  who  suddenly  appeared  and  heard  the  tale 
of  Vatel's  exploit  from  Tonsard. 

Courtecuisse  (short  shanks),  whose  name  was  nearly  al- 
ways transformed  in  this  way  into  "short  boots,"  clicked  his 
tongue  against  the  roof  of  his  mouth,  and  set  down  his  glass 
on  the  table. 

"Vatel  is  in  the  wrong,"  he  answered.  "In  the  old  mother's 
place,  I  should  bruise  my  ribs  and  take  to  my  bed,  I  would 
say  I  was  ill,  and  I  would  summon  the  Upholsterer  and  his 
keeper  for  sixty  francs  of  damages.  M.  Sarcus  would  give 
them  to  you." 

"Anyhow,  the  Upholsterer  would  give  the  money  to  avoid 
the  fuss  that  might  be  made  about  it,"  said  Godain. 

Vaudoyer,  ex-policeman,  five  feet  six  inches  in  height, 
with  a  face  pitted  by  the  smallpox,  and  hollowed  out  after 
the  nutcracker  pattern,  held  his  peace,  and  looked  dubious  at 
this. 

"Well,  what  now?"  asked  Tonsard,  whose  mouth  watered 
for  those  sixty  francs.  "What  is  ruffling  you  now,  great 
noodle  ?  Sixty  francs  to  my  mother  would  put  me  in  the  way 
of  making  something  out  of  it !  We  will  raise  a  racket  for 
three  hundred  francs,  and  M.  Gourdon  might  as  well  go  up 
to  the  Aigues  and  tell  them  that  mother's  hip  has  been  put 
out." 

"And  they  would  put  it  out  for  her,"  his  wife  went  on; 
"these  things  are  done  in  Paris." 


THE  PEASANTRY  209 

"That  would  cost  too  much,"  objected  Godain. 

"I  have  heard  too  much  talk  about  the  lawyers  to  feel  sure 
that  things  will  go  as  you  wish,"  Vaudoyer  said  at  last;  he 
had  often  been  present  in  court,  and  had  assisted  Ex-Ser- 
geant Soudry.  "At  Soulanges  it  would  be  all  right  even  now; 
M.  Soudry  represents  the  Government,  and  there  is  no  love 
lost  between  him  and  the  Upholsterer.  But  if  you  attack 
Vatel,  they  will  be  sharp  enough  to  defend  the  case ;  and  they 
will  say,  'The  woman  was  in  the  wrong;  she  had  a  sapling 
in  her  bundle,  or  she  would  have  let  the  forester  look  into 
her  faggots  on  the  road;  she  would  not  have  run  away;  and 
if  anything  happened  to  her,  she  has  only  her  own  misdoings 
to  blame  for  it.'  No,  it  is  not  a  case  to  be  sure  of." 

"Did  the  master  defend  the  case  when  I  summoned  him?" 
said  Courtecuisse.  "Not  he.  He  paid  me." 

"I  will  go  to  Soulanges  if  you  like,"  said  Bonnebault,  "and 
ask  M.  Gourdon,  the  registrar,  what  he  thinks,  and  I  will  let 
you  know  this  evening  if  there  is  anything  in  it." 

"You  only  want  an  excuse  for  going  to  see  that  great  goose, 
Socquard's  girl,"  said  Marie  Tonsard,  slapping  Bonnebault 
on  the  shoulder  as  if  she  meant  to  sound  his  lungs. 

Just  at  that  moment  came  a  fragment  of  an  old  Bur- 
gundian  Christmas  carol: 

"A  brave  deed  once  He  did,  I  wot, 

Whenas  our  Lord  did  dine, 
The  water  in  the  waterpot 
He  turned  to  Malmsey  wine." 

Everybody  recognized  Daddy  Fourchon's  voice,  raised  in  a 
ditty  which  must  have  been  peculiarly  pleasing  to  the  old 
man.  Mouche  piped  an  accompaniment  in  childish  treble. 

"Oh,  they  have  had  a  blow-out!"  Granny  Tonsard  called 
out  to  her  daughter;  "your  father  is  as  red  as  a  gridiron, 
and  the  child  is  dyed  the  color  of  a  vine-stem." 

"Hail !"  cried  the  old  man,  "you  rascals  are  here  in  full 
force ! — Hail !"  he  added,  turning  suddenly  on  his  grand- 


210  THE  PEASANTRY 

daughter,  who  had  her  arms  about  Bonnebault.  "Hail,  Mary ! 
full  of  vices,  Satan  be  with  thee,  cursed  be  thou  above  all 
women,  and  the  rest  of  it. — Hail,  fellows!  You  are  caught 
now !  You  may  say  good-bye  to  your  sheaves !  Here  is  news 
for  you!  I  told  you  so,  I  told  you  that  the  master  yonder 
would  be  one  too  many  for  you!  Well,  then,  he  will  have 
the  law  of  you,  and  make  you  smart  for  it ! — Ah !  see  what 
comes  of  measuring  yourselves  with  the  bourgeois !  The 
bourgeois  have  made  so  many  laws,  that  they  have  a  law  for 

every  little  thing " 

j  Here  an  alarming  hiccough  suddenly  gave  a  new  direction 
to  the  venerable  orator's  ideas. 

"If  Vermichel  were  here,  I  would  blow  down  his  throat; 
he  should  know  what  Alicante  means !  Ah !  that  is  a  wine ! 
If  I  were  not  a  Burgundian,  I  would  be  a  Spaniard !  A  wine 
of  God !  The  Pope  says  mass  with  it,  I  know !  What  a  wine ! 
— I  am  young  again ! — I  say,  Short  Boots,  if  your  wife  were 
here — I  think  she  would  be  young  too !  Spanish  wine  beats 
spiced  wine ;  no  question  about  it ! — There  ought  to  be  an- 
other Revolution,  only  to  clear  out  the  cellars " 

"But  what  is  the  news,  dad?"  asked  Tonsard. 

"There  will  be  no  harvest  for  the  like  of  you.  The  Up- 
holsterer will  put  a  stop  to  the  gleaning !" 

"Stop  the  gleaning!"  Every  voice  in  the  tavern  went  up 
as  one  voice,  dominated  by  the  shrill  notes  of  four  women. 

"Yes,"  piped  Mouche !  "and  he  will  issue  a  proclamation 
by  Groison,  and  have  notices  stuck  up  all  over  the  canton; 
and  no  one  is  to  glean  except  those  who  have  paupers'  cer- 
tificates." 

"And,  get  hold  of  the  meaning  of  this"  said  Fourchon, 
"other  communes  will  not  be  allowed  to  sneak  in." 

''What's  up?"  said  Bonnebault.  "Neither  my  grand- 
mother nor  I,  nor  your  mother,  Godain,  are  to  be  allowed  to 
glean  here?  Pretty  tricks  these  of  the  authorities! 
Plague  take  them ! — Why  this  General,  your  mayor,  is  a  per- 
fect heli-broke-loose " 

"Are  you  going  to  glean  all  the  same,  Godain?"  asked 


THE  PEASANTRY  211 

Tonsard,  turning  to  the  plow-wright's  assistant,  who  was 
talking  aside  with  Catherine. 

"If  asked  Godain.  "I  have  nothing;  so  I  am  a  pauper, 
and  I  shall  ask  for  a  certificate." 

"Just  tell  me  what  they  gave  daddy  for  his  otter,  honey?" 
said  the  comely  mistress  of  the  house.  Mouche,  sitting  on 
his  aunt's  knee,  was  quite  overcome  by  the  effort  to  digest 
his  late  meal;  his  eyes  were  heavy  with  the  two  bottles  of 
wine  consumed  therewith,  but  he  laid  his  head  on  his  aunt's 
neck,  and  murmured  cunningly: 

"I  do  not  know ;  but  he  has  gold ! — Keep  me  like  a  fight- 
ing-cock for  a  month,  and  I  might  find  out  for  you  where  he 
hides  his  money,  for  he  has  a  hoard  somewhere." 

"Father  has  gold !"  said  La  Tonsard  in  low  tones,  meant 
only  for  her  husband,  whose  voice  rose  above  the  storm  of 
heated  discussion  in  which  the  whole  tavern  joined. 

"Hush !"  cried  the  old  sentinel.     "Here's  Groison !" 

Deep  silence  prevailed  in  the  tavern.  When  Groison  might 
be  supposed  to  be  out  of  earshot,  Granny  Tonsard  gave  the 
signal,  and  again  the  discussion  broke  out :  Would  it  be  pos- 
sible to  glean  as  heretofore  without  a  pauper's  certificate? 

"You  will  be  made  to  obey,  that  is  certain,"  said  old  Four- 
chon,  "for  the  Upholsterer  has  gone  to  see  the  prefect  and 
ask  him  to  call  the  soldiers  out  to  keep  order.  They  will 
shoot  you  down  like  dogs — which  we  are !"  wailed  the  old 
man,  struggling  with  the  torpid  influence  which  the  Alicante 
exerted  on  his  tongue. 

This  second  announcement  made  by  Fourchon,  preposter- 
ous though  it  was,  produced  an  effect.  The  audience  grew 
thoughtful;  they  quite  believed  that  the  Government  was  ca- 
pable of  massacring  them  without  mercy.  Bonnebault  spoke : 

"There  was  this  sort  of  trouble  round  about  Toulouse  when 
I  was  stationed  there,"  said  he.  "We  marched  out,  the  peas- 
ants were  cut  down  and  arrested. — It  was  a  joke  to  see  them 
trying  to  make  a  stand  against  regular  troops.  Ten  of  them 
were  sent  off  to  the  hulks  afterwards  and  eleven  more  went 
to  jail,  and  it  all  came  to  nothing,  ay !  A  soldier  is  a  soldier, 
and  has  a  right  to  cut  you  civilians  down,  gee  whoa ! " 


212  THE  PEASANTRY 

"What  is  the  matter  with  you  all,"  asked  Tonsard;  "you 
are  as  scared  as  wild  goats? — Perhaps  they  will  catch  my 
mother  or  my  girls  with  something,  will  they?  Some  one  is 
going  to  be  locked  up,  eh? — Well,  then,  they  will  go  to  jail. 
The  Upholsterer  will  not  put  the  whole  neighborhood  in  jail. 
And  if  he  does,  the  King  will  feed  them  better  than  they  feed 
themselves;  and  they  warm  the  cells  in  winter." 

"You  are  simpletons !"  bellowed  old  Fourchon.  "It  is  bet- 
ter to  lie  low,  it  is,  than  to  fly  in  the  man's  face.  If  you  do, 
you  will  be  paid  out  for  it.  If  you  like  the  hulks — that  is 
another  thing !  The  work  is  not  so  hard  there  as  it  is  in  the 
fields,  it  is  true,  but  you  have  not  your  liberty." 

"Perhaps,  after  all,"  began  Vaudoyer,  who  was  one  of  the 
boldest  in  counsel,  "it  would  be  better  that  one  of  us  should 
risk  his  skin  to  rid  the  country  of  the  Beast  of  Gevaudan, 
that  has  his  lair  by  the  Avonne  gate " 

"Settle  Michaud !"  said  Nicolas.    "That  is  what  I  think." 

"Things  are  not  ripe  yet,"  said  Fourchon,  "We  should  lose 
too  much,  children.  What  we  ought  to  do  is  to  make  a  poor 
mouth,  and  cry  out  that  we  are  starving ;  the  master  and  his 
wife  up  at  the  Aigues  will  be  for  helping  us,  and  you  will 
make  more  that  way  than  by  the  gleaning." 

"You  are  a  chuckle-headed  lot,"  shouted  Tonsard.  "Sup- 
pose that  there  is  a  racket  with  the  police  and  the  soldiers, 
they  will  not  clap  a  whole  countryside  in  irons,  and  there  are 
the  old  seigneurs,  and  the  folk  at  Ville-aux-Fayes ;  they  are 
well  disposed  to  back  us  up." 

"That  is  true,"  said  Courtecuisse.  "Nobody  complains  ex- 
cept the  Upholsterer.  M.  de  Soulanges  and  M.  de  Ron- 
querolles  and  the  rest  are  content !  When  one  thinks  that  if 
that  cuirassier  had  been  man  enough  to  be  killed  with  the 
rest  of  them,  I  should  be  snug  at  my  Avonne  gate  at  this 
day,  and  that  he  has  turned  me  topsy-turvy  till  I  don't  know 
whether  I  am  on  my  head  or  my  heels " 

"They  will  not  call  the  soldiers  out  for  a  beggarly  bour- 
geois who  is  at  loggerheads  with  the  whole  neighborhood 
round,"  said  Godain.  "It  is  his  own  fault.  He  must  needs 


THE  PEASANTRY  213 

upset  everything  and  everybody  here;  Government  will  tell 
him  to  go  and  hang  himself." 

"That  is  just  what  Government  will  say ;  Government  can't 
help  itself — poor  Government  I"  said  Fourchon,  smitten  with 
a  sudden  tenderness  for  the  Government.  "I  am  sorry  for 
Government ;  'tis  a  good  Government.  It  is  hard  up  and  has 
not  a  sou,  like  us — which  is  a  stupid  thing  for  a  Government 
when  it  coins  the  money  itself. — Ah!  if  I  were  Govern- 
ment  " 

"But  they  told  me  over  at  Ville-aux-Fayes  that  M.  de 
Eonquerolles  had  said  something  in  the  Assembly  about  our 
rights/'  cried  Courtecuisse. 

"Yes,  I  saw  that  in  M'sieu  Eigou's  paper,"  said  Vaudoyer, 
who  could  read  and  write,  in  his  quality  of  ex-policeman. 

In  spite  of  his  maudlin  tenderness,  old  Fourchon  had  been 
following  the  discussion,  as  well  as  the  by-play  which  made 
it  interesting,  with  close  and  intelligent  attention.  Suddenly 
he  contrived  to  get  on  his  feet  and  take  up  his  position  in  the 
midst  of  the  tavern. 

"Listen  to  the  old  one,  he  is  tipsy,"  said  Tonsard;  "he 
has  twice  as  much  mischief  in  him,  his  own  and  the 
wine " 

"Spanish  wine !  that  makes  three !"  broke  in  Fourchon, 
laughing  like  a  satyr.  "Children,  you  must  not  take  the  bull 
by  the  horns,  you  are  not  strong  enough ;  take  him  in  flank ! 
— Sham  dead,  lie  like  sleeping  dogs !  The  little  woman  has 
had  a  good  frightening  by  now;  things  will  not  go  on  like 
this  much  longer,  you  will  see.  Her  will  leave  the  place,  and 
if  her  goes  the  Upholsterer  will  go  too,  for  he  dotes  upon  her. 
That  is  the  way  to  do  it.  But  to  hurry  them  away,  I  advise 
you  to  take  their  counselor  from  them,  their  stronghold,  our 
spy,  our  ape." 

"Who  is  that?" 

"Eh!  why,  'tis  the  cursed  cure!"  said  Tonsard,  "he  that 
rakes  up  sins  and  would  like  to  feed  us  on  holy  wafers." 

"Eight  you  are !"  cried  Vaudoyer,  "we  did  very  well  with- 
out the  cure.  Something  ought  to  be  done  to  rid  us  of  the 
wafer-eater.  He  is  the  common  enemy." 


214  THE  PEASANTRY 

"The  whipper-snapper,"  said  Fourchon  (this  was  a  nick- 
name given  to  the  cure  on  account  of  his  shabby  appearance), 
"may  he  fall  into  the  hands  of  some  sly  hussy,  for  he  keeps 
every  fast  day.  Then  if  he  were  caught  on  the  spree  there 
would  be  a  fine  hubbub,  and  his  bishop  would  have  to  send 
him  somewhere  else.  Old  Rigou,  good  soul,  would  be  mightily 
pleased.  If  Courtecuisse's  girl  would  leave  her  place  at 
Auxerre,  she  is  so  pretty  that  if  she  turned  pious  she  would 
save  the  country.  Ta,  ran,  tan  ti !" 

"And  why  should  it  not  be  you?"  whispered  Godain  to 
Catherine.  "There  would  be  a  basketful  of  crowns  to  be  made 
out  of  it  for  hush-money,  and  you  would  be  mistress  here  at 
once." 

"Are  we  going  to  glean  or  are  we  not?"  cried  Bonnebault. 
"Much  I  care  for  your  Abbe.  I  am  from  Conches,  and  we 
have  no  parson  there  to  harrow  our  consciences  with  his 


"Wait  a  bit,"  opined  Vaudoyer.  "Some  one  ought  to  go 
to  old  Eigou  (he  knows  the  law)  and  ask  him  if  the  Up- 
holsterer can  stop  our  gleaning.  He  will  tell  us  if  we  are  in 
the  right.  If  the  Upholsterer  is  within  the  law,  then  we  will 
see  about  taking  him  in  flank,  as  the  old  one  says." 

"There  will  be  blood  shed,"  said  Nicolas,  rising  to  his  feet 
(he  had  finished  oft8  the  bottle  of  wine  which  Catherine  had 
set  before  him  to  keep  him  quiet).  "If  you  will  listen  to  me, 
some  one  will  bring  down  Michaud;  but  you  are  a  sappy  lot 
of  dawdlers !" 

"Not  me!"  said  Bonnebault.  "If  you  are  the  friends  to 
keep  mum  about  it,  I  will  undertake  to  bring  down  the  Up- 
holsterer myself !  What  fun  to  lodge  a  bullet  in  his  bread- 
basket !  I  should  have  my  revenge  on  all  my  stuck-up  of- 
ficers." 

"There,  there  f"  cried  Jean-Louis  Tonsard,  who  had  come 
in  since  old  Fourdion  entered.  Some  said  that  Gaubertin  was 
Jean-Louis'  father.  The  young  fellow  had  succeeded  to  Ton- 
sard's  occupation  of  clipping  hedges  and  arbors  and  the  like 
offices.  He  went  to  well-to-do  houses,  chatted  with  masters 


THE  PEASANTRY  215 

and  servants,  and  by  dint  of  picking  up  ideas  in  this  way  he 
became  the  man  of  resource  and  most  knowing  member  of 
the  family.  For  the  last  few  months  Jean-Louis  had  paid 
court  to  Eigou's  pretty  servant  girl,  and  in  this  matter,  as 
will  very  shortly  be  seen,  he  justified  the  high  opinion  en- 
tertained of  his  shrewdness. 

"Well,  prophet,  what  is  the  matter?"  asked  his  parent. 

"You  are  playing  the  bourgeois'  game,  I  tell  you,"  said 
Jean-Louis.  "Frighten  the  gentry  at  the  Aigues  so  as  to 
maintain  your  rights,  well  and  good ;  but  as  for  driving  them 
out  of  the  place  and  having  the  Aigues  put  up  for  auction, 
that  is  what  the  bourgeois  want  in  the  valley,  but  it  is  not 
to  our  interest  to  do  it.  If  you  help  to  divide  up  the  big 
estates,  where  are  the  National  lands  to  come  from  in  the 
revolution  that's  coming  ?  You  will  get  the  land  for  nothing 
then,  just  as  old  Kigou  did;  but  once  let  the  bourgeois  chew 
up  the  land,  they  will  spit  it  out  in  much  smaller  and  dearer 
bits.  You  will  work  for  them,  like  all  the  others  who  are 
working  for  Rigou.  Look  at  Courtecuisse !" 

The  policy  set  forth  in  this  harangue  was  too  profound  for 
wine-flustered  wits.  Every  one  present,  Courtecuisse  ex- 
cepted,  was  putting  money  by.  Every  one  meant  to  have  his 
share  of  the  loaf  of  the  Aigues.  So  they  allowed  Jean-Louis 
to  talk  on,  and  kept  up  private  conversations  among  them- 
selves, after  the  manner  of  the  Chamber  of  Deputies. 

"Well,  now,  you  hear  that !  You  will  be  Eigou's  cat's- 
paws,"  cried  Fourchon,  the  only  one  who  caught  the  drift  of 
the  speech  made  by  his  grandson. 

Just  at  that  moment  Langlume,  the  miller  from  the  Aigues, 
happened  to  pass.  La  Tonsard  hailed  him. 

"So  it  is  true,  is  it,  that  they  are  going  to  stop  the  gleaning, 
Mister  Deputy  Mayor  ?" 

Langlume,  a  jovial-looking  little  man  with  a  floury  counte- 
nance and  whitish-gray  suit  of  clothes,  came  up  the  steps, 
and  immediately  every  peasant  looked  serious. 

"Lord,  boys,  yes  and  no.  The  really  poor  will  glean;  but 
the  steps  that  will  be  taken  will  be  greatly  to  your  inter- 
ests  " 


216  THE  PEASANTRY 

"How  so?'"'  inquired  Godain. 

"Why,  if  they  prevent  all  the  poor  folk  from  pouring  in 
on  us,"  said  the  miller,  with  a  shrewd  Norman  wink,  "that 
will  not  hinder  the  rest  of  you  from  going  to  glean  elsewhere ; 
unless  all  the  mayors  copy  the  mayor  of  Blangy." 

"So,  it  is  true?"  asked  Tonsard,  with  menace  in  his  looks. 

"For  my  own  part,"  said  Bonnebault,  as  he  tilted  his  forag- 
ing cap  over  one  ear,  and  twirled  his  hazel  switch  till  ic 
whistled  about  him;  "I  am  going  back  to  Conches  to  give 
warning  to  friends  there."  And  with  that  the  Lovelace  of 
the  valley  went  out,  whistling  the  tune  of  the  martial  ditty : 

"You  know  the  Hussars  of  the  Guard, 
And  you  don't  know  the  Trombone  in  the  Band?" 

"I  say,  Marie !"  the  old  grandmother  called,  "your  sweet- 
heart is  going  a  droll  way  round  to  Conches." 

Marie  sprang  to  the  door.  "He  is  going  to  see  Aglae !"  she 
cried.  "That  goose  of  a  girl  yonder  wants  a  good  basting, 
once  for  all." 

"Here,  Vaudoyer,"  said  Tonsard,  "just  go  and  see  old 
Rigou.  Then  we  shall  know  what  to  be  at.  He  is  your  oracle ; 
what  he  spouts  out  costs  nothing." 

"Here  is  another  piece  of  folly,"  exclaimed  Jean-Louis 
under  his  breath.  "He  does  nothing  for  nothing.  Annette 
spoke  truth ;  he  is  a  worse  counselor  than  anger." 

"I  recommend  you  to  be  careful,"  added  Langlume,  "for 
the  General  went  to  the  prefecture  about  your  misdoings,  and 
Sibilet  said  that  he  vowed  on  his  honor  that  he  would  go  to 
Paris  if  need  was,  to  speak  with  the  Chancellor  of  France, 
the  King,  and  the  whole  shop,  but  he  would  have  the  law  of 
his  peasants." 

"His  peasants !" 

"Oh,  indeed !  then  perhaps  we  are  not  our  own  masters 
now  ?"  asked  Tonsard. 

At  this  inquiry,  Vaudoyer  went  in  search  of  the  ex-mayor, 
and  Langlum£,  who  had  already  gone  out  out,  returned  a 


THE  PEASANTRY  217 

step  or  two,  and  called  back,  "You  pack  of  do-nothings !  have 
you  incomes  of  your  own  that  you  have  a  mind  to  be  your  own 
masters  ?" 

The  words  were  spoken  in  jest,  but  the  profound  truth  in 
them  was  felt  something  in  the  way  that  a  horse  feels  a  flick 
of  the  lash. 

"Tra,  la,  la!  you  masters! — I  say,  sonny,  after  what  you 
did  this  morning,  you  are  more  like  to  play  a  tune  on  the 
rifle  than  to  have  my  clarinette  in  your  fingers." 

"Don't,  you  worry  him ;  he  is  just  the  one  to  make  you 
bring  up  our  wine  by  punching  your  stomach,"  said  Cathe- 
rine, turning  savagely  on  her  grandfather. 

XIII 

THE  PEASANTS'  MONEY-LENDER 

STRATEGICALLY  speaking,  Eigou  at  Blangy  was  a  sentinel 
at  an  outpost  in  time  of  war.  He  kept  watch  over  the  Aigues, 
and  thoroughly  he  did  his  work !  No  police  spy  is  comparable 
with  an  amateur  detective  in  the  service  of  hate. 

When  the  General  first  came  to  the  Aigues,  Eigou  must 
have  had  his  own  ideas  concerning  the  newcomer,  and  plans, 
which  came  to  nothing  on  Montcornet's  marriage  with  a 
Troisville;  at  first  he  appeared  to  be  well-disposed  towards 
the  great  landowner.  He  had  shown  his  intentions  so  plainly 
that  Gaubertin  judged  it  expedient  to  offer  him  a  share  of  the 
spoil  so  as  to  involve  him  in  the  conspiracy  against  the  Aigues. 
But  before  Eigou  committed  himself  and  accepted  the  part 
for  which  he  was  cast,  he  meant  to  force  the  General  "to  show 
his  hand,"  as  he  put  it. 

One  day  after  the  Countess  was  installed,  a  tiny  green- 
painted  basket-chaise  drove  up  to  the  main  entrance  of  the 
Aigues.  In  it  sat  his  worship  the  mayor,  with  the  mayoress 
at  his  side.  The  pair  stepped  out  of  it  and  ascended  the 
flight  of  steps  on  the  terrace.  But  the  Countess  was  a  de- 
voted partisan  of  the  bishop,  the  clerical  party,  and  the  Abbe 


218  THE  PEASANTRY 

Brossette;  and  Francois  reported  that  "her  ladyship  was  not 
at  home."  The  piece  of  impertinence,  which  might  have  been 
expected  of  a  woman  born  in  Russia,  brought  a  yellow  flush 
to  the  Benedictine's  visage. 

If  the  lady  had  felt  any  curiosity  to  see  the  man  of  whom 
the  cure  had  said  "that  he  was  a  soul  in  hell  who  plunged 
into  sin  as  into  a  bath  to  refresh  himself,"  she  might  per- 
haps have  avoided  that  blunder.  She  would  have  been  care- 
ful not  to  arouse  in  the  mayor  that  cold-blooded  hatred  which 
Liberals  bore  Royalists,  a  hatred  that  could  not  fail  to  in- 
crease, when  the  near  neighborhood  kept  the  memory  of  a 
mortification  ever  fresh. 

A  few  explanatory  details  concerning  this  man  will  have 
the  double  advantage  of  throwing  light  on  Rigou's  share  of 
the  "big  business,"  as  his  two  partners  called  it,  and  of  por- 
traying, at  the  same  time,  an  extremely  curious  type.  It  is 
a  rural  product  peculiar  to  France,  and  undiscovered  as  yet 
by  any  pencil.  And  more  than  this :  every  single  detail  is  of 
immense  importance  considered  in  its  bearing  on  the  history 
of  this  valley;  Rigou's  house,  his  fashion  of  blowing  his  fire, 
his  habits  at  table,  his  opinions  and  way  of  life — none  of 
these  things  are  insignificant  from  this  point  of  view.  In 
fact,  the  renegade  illustrates  in  person  democracy  in  theory 
and  practice;  he  is  its  alpha  and  omega  and  summum. 

Possibly  you  may  remember  the  portraits  of  other  Mas- 
ters of  Avarice,  painted  in  preceding  Scenes.  The  Provincial 
Miser,  first  and  foremost — Goodman  Grandet  of  Saumur, 
whose  avarice  was  as  much  a  part  of  his  nature  as  the  tiger's 
thirst  for  blood ;  next  follows  old  Gobseck  the  bill-discounter, 
the  Jesuit  of  Gold — for  him  the  relish  of  money  lay  in  the 
sense  of  power  over  others  which  it  gave  him,  tears  for  him 
were  as  wine,  and  he  was  a  connoisseur;  then  comes  the 
Baron  de  Nucingen,  who  raised  commercial  cheating  to  the 
height  of  statecraft;  and  lastly,  surely  you  recollect  a  study 
of  the  household  miser — old  Hochon  of  Issoudun — or  that 
other,  grown  avaricious  through  family  ambition,  little  La 
Baudraye  of  Sancerre? 


THE  PEASANTRY  21» 

And  yet,  so  diverse  are  the  shades  of  the  same  human  affec- 
tions, so  different  the  color  they  take  up  in  passing  through  v 
each  human  medium,  and  this  is  so  especially  the  case  with 
avarice,  that  there  is  another  distinct  type  still  left  on  the 
dissecting  slab  of  the  amphitheatre  of  the  study  of  contem- 
porary human  nature.  Eigou  was  Eigou,  the  Selfish  Miser, 
or,  to  be  more  precise,  a  miser  full  of  tender  cares  for  hi3 
own  comfort,  but  hard  and  indifferent  where  others  were  con- 
cerned. He  was,  to  be  brief,  the  ecclesiastical  miser,  the 
monk  who  remained  a  monk  so  long  as  he  could  squeeze  the 
juice  of  the  lemon  called  Good  Living,  and  took  the  secular 
habit  the  better  to  dip  in  the  public  purse.  Let  us  begin 
by  explaining  how  he  had  come  to  lead  a  life  of  unbroken 
ease  and  comfort  under  his  own  roof. 

Blangy,  to  wit  the  cluster  of  some  sixty  houses  described 
in  Blondet's  letter  to  Nathan,  stands  on  rising  ground  on  the 
left  bank  of  the  Thune.  Each  house  is  surrounded  by  its 
own  garden,  and  in  consequence  Blangy  is  an  extremely  pretty 
village.  Some  few  of  the  houses  are  down  by  the  waterside, 
at  the  very  top  of  the  knoll  stands  the  village  church,  and 
beside  it  the  house  that  used  to  be  the  parsonage,  the  church- 
yard lying  round  about  the  apse  end,  after  the  country 
fashion. 

Eigou  took  the  opportunity  of  laying  his  sacrilegious  hands 
on  the  parsonage-house,  built  in  bygone  days  by  that  good 
Catholic,  Mile.  Choin,  on  a  bit  of  ground  bought  by  her  for 
the  purpose.  The  church  was  only  separated  from  the  par- 
sonage by  the  width  of  a  terraced  garden,  whence  there  was 
a  view  over  the  lands  of  Blangy,  Soulanges,  and  Cerneux ;  for 
the  house  stood  between  the  parks  of  the  two  manors.  A  field 
lay  on  the  side  furthest  from  the  church,  a  bit  of  land  pur- 
chased by  the  previous  cure  a  short  time  before  his  death. 
Eigou,  by  nature  suspicious,  had  put  up  a  wall  about  it. 

As  in  due  time  the  mayor  declined  to  give  up  the  parsonage- 
house  for  the  purposes  for  which  it  was  intended,  the  com- 
mune was  obliged  to  buy  a  cottage  for  the  cure  near  the 

church,  and  to  lay  out  five  thousand  francs  in  setting  it  in 
VOL.  10 — 40 


220  THE  PEASANTRY 

order,  enlarging  it,  and  adding  a  bit  of  garden  to  it  undef 
the  wall  of  the  sacristy,  so  that  there  might  be  direct  com- 
munication as  heretofore  between  the  cure's  house  and  the 
church. 

Both  houses,  therefore,  being  built  on  the  alignment  of 
the  church,  with  which  their  gardens  apparently  connected 
them,  looked  out  upon  a  square  space,  which  might  be  con- 
sidered as  the  market-place  of  Blangy,  and  this  more  particu- 
larly of  late  years,  since  the  Count  had  built  a  communal 
hall,  which  served  as  a  mayor's  office,  just  opposite  the  cure's 
house,  and  had  lodged  the  rural  policeman  in  it.  Further- 
more, he  had  erected  a  schoolhouse  for  the  brothers  of  the 
Doctrine  chretienne,  for  which  the  Abbe  Brossette  had  for- 
merly pleaded  in  vain.  The  sometime  Benedictine's  house  and 
the  parsonage  where  the  young  cure  lived,  being  both  contigu- 
ous to  the  church,  were  as  much  united  as  separated  by  the 
edifice,  and  furthermore,  they  overlooked  each  other,  and  con- 
sequently the  whole  village  knew  all  that  went  on  in  the  Abbe 
Brossette's  household. 

The  village  street  wound  uphill  from  the  Thune  to  the 
church,  and  the  knoll  of  Blangy  was  crowned  by  strips  of 
vineyard  and  peasants'  gardens  and  a  patch  of  copse. 

Rigou's  house  was  the  best  in  the  village;  it  was  built  of 
the  large  flints  peculiar  to  Burgundy,  laid  in  yellowish  mortar 
smoothed  out  in  squares  the  size  of  the  width  of  the  trowel, 
which  produced  a  series  of  wavy  lines  with  a  flint  surface, 
usually  black,  protruding  here  and  there  from  the  mortar. 
Bands  of  yellow  mortar,  unspotted  by  flints,  did  duty  for 
stone  facings  round  the  windows,  the  surface  (in  course  of 
time)  being  covered  with  fine  meandering  cracks,  such  as 
you  behold  in  old  ceilings.  The  clumsy  outside  shutters  were 
conspicuous  by  reason  of  thick  coats  of  dragon-green  paint. 
Scales  of  lichen  concealed  the  joints  of  the  slates  on  the  roof. 
It  was  a  typical  Burgundian  house,  such  as  the  traveler  may 
see  by  thousands  as  he  crosses  this  part  of  France. 

The  house  door  opened  upon  a  corridor,  in  the  middle  of 
which  the  wooden  staircase  rose.  As  soon  as  you  entered  you 


THE  PEASANTRY  221 

/aw  the  door  of  a  large  sitting-room  lighted  by  three  win- 
dows, which  looked  out  into  the  square.  The  kitchen,  con- 
trived underneath  the  staircase,  looked  into  a  yard  neatly 
paved  with  cobble-stones,  with  a  large  double-leaved  gate  on 
the  side  of  the  street.  So  much  for  the  ground  floor. 

There  were  three  rooms  on  the  first  story,  and  a  little  attic 
filled  the  space  in  the  roof  above. 

Outside,  in  the  yard,  a  woodshed,  stable  and  coach-house 
occupied  the  side  at  right  angles  to  the  house ;  and  on  a  floor 
above  the  rickety  erection  there  was  a  fruit-loft  and  a  ser- 
vant's bedroom.  Opposite  the  house  stood  the  cowshed  and 
the  pig-sties. 

The  garden  was  about  an  acre  in  extent  and  enclosed  by 
walls.  It  was  a  cure's  garden,  full  of  espaliers,  fruit-trees, 
and  trellis  vines,  and  sanded  garden  walks  with  pyramid 
fruit-trees  on  either  side,  and  squares  of  pot-herbs  manured 
with  stable  litter.  The  croft  above  the  house  had  also  been 
planted  with  trees  and  enclosed  within  walls;  it  was  a  space 
large  enough  to  keep  a  couple  of  cows  all  the  year  round. 

Inside  the  house  the  sitting-room  was  wainscoted  to  elbow- 
height  and  hung  with  old  tapestry.  The  furniture  of  wal- 
nut wood,  brown  with  age,  and  covered  with  needlework,  was 
in  keeping  with  the  old-fashioned  rooms  and  ceiling.  The 
three  main  beams  were  visible  and  painted,  but  the  interven- 
ing spaces  were  plastered.  Above  the  walnut-wood  chimney- 
piece  stood  a  grotesque  mirror,  its  sole  ornament  with  the 
exception  of  two  brass  eggs  mounted  on  marble  pedestals. 
These  objects  split  in  half;  you  turned  back  the  upper  part 
on  its  hinge  and  it  did  duty  as  a  candle-sconce.  This  kind 
of  convertible  candle-stick  with  its  little  ornamental  chains 
is  an  invention  of  the  days  of  Louis  XV.,  and  is  beginning 
to  grow  scarce. 

On  a  green  and  gold  bracket  set  in  the  wall  opposite  the 
windows  stood  a  clock,  an  excellent  time-keeper  in  spite  of 
its  cheap  case.  The  curtains,  suspended  from  rings  on  an 
iron  curtain-rod,  were  fifty  years  old  at  least,  and  made  of 
a  cotton  material,  of  a  checked  pattern,  very  similar  to  the 


2TJ2  THE  PEASANTRY 

cottons  printed  in  pink  and  white  squares  that  used  to  come 
from  the  Indies.  A  sideboard  and  a  table  completed  the  list 
of  furniture,  which  was  kept  spotlessly  clean. 

By  the  hearth  stood  a  huge  easy-chair,  dedicated  to  Eigou's 
sole  use;  and  in  the  corner  above  the  low  what-not,  which 
he  used  as  a  desk,  hung  a  pair  of  bellows  from  a  brass- 
headed  nail  of  the  commonest  kind.  To  that  pair  of  bellows 
Bigou  owed  his  prosperity. 

From  this  bald  description,  which  rivals  an  auctioneer's 
sale-catalogue  for  brevity,  the  reader  might  easily  be  led  to 
imagine  that  the  furniture  of  M.  and  Mme.  Eigou's  re- 
spective chambers  was  limited  to  strict  necessaries,  which 
would  be  a  delusion.  Eigou's  parsimony  was  not  of  the  kind 
that  denies  itself  any  material  comfort.  Wherefore  the  most 
fastidious  fine  lady  could  have  slept  luxuriously  in  the  bed 
made  for  Eigou;  the  mattresses  were  of  the  best,  the  sheets 
fine  and  soft,  the  down  bed  had  once  been  the  gift  of  some 
devout  woman  to  a  reverend  churchman.  Ample  curtains 
shut  out  cold  draughts.  And,  as  will  be  seen,  it  was  the  same 
with  everything  else. 

At  the  outset  the  miser  had  reduced  his  wife,  who  could 
neither  read,  write,  nor  cipher,  to  slavish  obedience.  She, 
poor  creature,  had  ruled  her  late  master,  only  to  become  her 
husband's  servant  and  drudge.  She  cooked  and  washed  for 
him  with  little  or  no  help  from  the  young  person  named  An- 
nette, a  very  handsome  girl  of  nineteen,  as  much  a  slave 
to  Eigou  as  her  mistress,  with  thirty  francs  a  year  for  her 
wage. 

Mme.  Eigou  was  tall,  gaunt,  and  wizened-looking;  all  the 
red  in  her  sallow  face  was  gathered  on  the  cheek-bones;  her 
head  was  always  tied  up  in  a  handkerchief,  and  she  wore  the 
same  skirt  all  the  year  round.  She  did  not  pass  a  couple  of 
hours  out  of  her  house  in  a  month,  and  spent  her  consuming 
energy  on  household  work,  in  a  way  which  only  the  most 
zealous  domestic  could  or  would  have  done.  It  would  have 
puzzled  the  keenest  observer  to  discover  in  the  woman  a  trace 
of  the  splendid  figure,  the  fresh  Eubens  coloring,  the  full- 


THE  PEASANTRY  223 

blown  comeliness,  the  superb  teeth,  the  maiden  glances  that 
first  attracted  Cure  ISTiseron's  attention  to  the  girl.  A  single 
confinement  (she  had  one  daughter,  Mme.  Soudry  junior) 
had  decimated  her  teeth,  bleared  her  eyes,  and  withered  her 
complexion;  her  eyelashes  had  fallen  out.  It  seemed  as  if 
the  hand  of  God  had  been  heavy  on  the  priest's  wife. 

Yet,  like  every  well-to-do  farmer's  wife,  she  loved  to  look 
through  her  stores  of  silk,  in  the  piece  and  unworn  dresses. 

Her  drawers  were  full  of  laces  and  trinkets,  which  only 
caused  Eigou's  young  servant-girls  to  commit  the  sin  of  envy, 
and  to  wish  her  death ;  her  finery  had  never  served  any  other 
purpose.  She  was  one  of  those  half-animal  creatures  who 
are  born  to  live  instinctively.  As  the  once  lovely  Arsene  had 
been  no  schemer,  the  late  Niseron's  disposition  of  his  prop- 
erty would  be  an  insoluble  mystery  but  for  the  clue.  An  odd 
circumstance  had  inspired  him  with  the  notion  of  disinherit- 
ing his  kin.  The  story  ought  to  be  told  for  the  benefit  of  that 
vast  proportion  of  mankind  who  have  expectations. 

There  had  been  a  time  Avhen  Mme.  Niseron,  the  Kepub- 
lican's  wife,  had  overwhelmed  her  husband's  uncle  with  atten- 
tions, for  there  was  an  imminent  prospect  of  succeeding  to  the 
property  of  an  old  man  of  seventy-two,  and  some  forty  and 
odd  thousand  francs  would  be  enough  to  keep  the  family  of  his 
only  relation  and  heir-at-law  in  very  tolerable  comfort.  The 
late  Mme.  Mseron  was  somewhat  impatiently  expecting  this 
desirable  increase  of  fortune,  for,  beside  her  son.  she  was  the 
happy  mother  of  a  sweet  little  girl,  a  mischievous,  innocent 
child.  Perhaps  it  is  because  such  children  are  doomed  to  die 
in  childhood,  that  in  their  childhood  they  are  so  complete, 
for  the  little  one  died  at  fourteen  of  "pale  color,"  as  chlorosis 
is  popularly  called.  She  was  the  will-o'-the-wisp  of  the  par- 
sonage, and  as  much  at  home  in  her  great-uncle's  house  as 
in  her  own.  She  had  it  all  her  own  way  there.  She  was  fond 
of  Mademoiselle  Arsene,  the  handsome  servant-maid  whom 
the  cure  took  into  his  house  in  1789.  Eevolutionary  storms 
had  even  then  relaxed  ecclesiastical  discipline.  Hitherto  he 
had  had  an  elderly  housekeeper,  but  old  Mile.  Pichard  felt 


224  THE  PEASANTRY 

that  she  was  failing,  and  sent  her  niece  Arsene,  thinking, 
no  doubt,  to  hand  over  her  rights  to  that  comely  damsel. 

In  1791,  soon  after  the  old  cure  offered  an  asylum  to  Dom 
Eigou  and  Frere  Jean,  little  Genevieve  took  it  into  her  head 
to  play  a  very  innocent  childish  prank.  One  day  at  the  par- 
sonage Arsene  and  several  children  were  playing  at  the  game 
in  which  each  child  in  turn  hides  some  object  which  the  others 
try  to  find,  and  calls  out,  "Burning !"  or  "Freezing !"  as  the 
seekers  are  nearer  or  further  from  the  object.  Little  Gene- 
vieve, seized  with  a  sudden  whim,  hid  the  bellows  in  Arsene's 
bed.  The  bellows  could  not  be  found,  the  children  gave  .up 
the  game,  Genevieve's  mother  came  to  bring  her  home,  and  the 
child  quite  forgot  to  hang  the  bellows  from  the  nail  again. 

For  a  whole  week  Arsene  and  her  aunt  looked  for  the  bel- 
lows, then  they  too  "gave  it  up;"  it  is  possible  to  live  with- 
out a  pair  of  bellows,  the  old  cure  blew  up  his  fire  with  an 
old  ear-trumpet,  made  in  times  when  everybody  had  one, 
which  proves  beyond  a  doubt  that  the  cure's  ear-trumpet 
had  belonged  to  some  courtier  of  the  time  of  Henry  III.  But 
at  length,  about  a  month  before  the  aunt  died,  the  Abbe 
Mouchon,  the  cure  from  Soulanges,  and  the  whole  Niseron 
family  came  to  dinner  at  the  parsonage,  and  the  housekeeper 
broke  out  into  renewed  jeremiads  over  the  bellows  which  had 
so  mysteriously  disappeared. 

"Eh!"  cried  little  Genevieve  Mseron,  bursting  out  laugh- 
ing. "Why,  I  hid  them  in  Arsene's  bed  a  fortnight  ago;  if 
she  had  made  her  bed,  the  great  lazy  thing,  she  would  have 
found  them." 

In  1791  every  one  was  free  to  laugh;  but  the  deepest  silence 
followed  the  laughter. 

"There  is  nothing  to  laugh  at,"  said  the  old  housekeeper; 
"Arsene  has  been  sitting  up  with  me  since  my  illness  began." 

In  spite  of  this  explanation,  the  cure  of  Blangy  looked  dag- 
gers at  Mme.  Niseron  and  her  husband,  such  a  look  as  a 
priest  can  give  when  he  thinks  that  a  trap  has  been  laid  for 
him. 

Then  the  housekeeper  died,  and  Dom  Eigou  managed  to 


Copyright,  1900,  by  J.  D.  A. 


-£•?    C-Ov* 


Gr£goire  Rigou. 


THE  PEASANTRY  225 

exasperate  the  Abbe  Niseron  against  his  nephew  to  such  pur- 
pose that  Frangois  Niseron  was  disinherited  by  a  will  made 
in  Arsene  Pichard's  favor. 

All  this  had  happened  long  ago,  but  in  1823  grateful  senti- 
ment still  led  Eigou  to  blow  the  fire  with  the  ear-trumpet, 
and  the  pair  of  bellows  still  hung  from  the  nail. 

Mme.  Mseron  doted  on  her  little  girl,  and  when  the  child 
died  in  1794,  the  mother  followed  her  within  the  year.  When 
the  cure  died,  Citizen  Eigou  took  the  burden  of  Arsene's  con- 
cerns upon  himself  by  taking  her  to  wife.  The  sometime 
lay  brother  from  the  abbey  attached  himself  to  Eigou  as  a 
dog  does  to  a  master,  and  in  his  own  person  combined  the 
offices  of  groom,  dairyman,  gardener,  body-servant,  and  stew- 
ard to  this  sensual  Harpagon. 

Eigou's  daughter  Arsene  was  married  (without  a  portion) 
to  the  public-prosecutor,  Soudry  junior;  she  inherited  some 
share  of  her  mother's  good  looks,  together  with  her  father's 
cunning. 

Eigou  had  reached  the  age  of  sixty-seven.  For  thirty  years 
he  had  not  known  illness;  nothing  seemed  to  shake  health 
that  might  well  be  called  insolent.  He  was  tall  and  spare. 
There  were  brownish  circles  about  his  eyes,  and  the  eyelids 
were  almost  black.  In  the  morning,  when  he  exhibited  a 
red,  wrinkled,  morocco-grained  throat,  his  resemblance  to 
a  condor  was  but  the  more  strikingly  complete  by  reason  of 
a  nose  of  sanguine  hue,  immensely  long,  and  very  sharp  at 
the  tip.  He  was  almost  bald,  the  curious  conformation  of 
the  back  of  his  head  would  have  alarmed  any  one  who  under- 
stood its  significance ;  for  that  long  ridge-shaped  prominence 
indicates  a  despotic  will.  The  grayish  eyes,  half  veiled  by 
membranous  webs  of  eyelids,  were  made  to  play  a  hypocrite's 
part.  Two  locks  of  hair,  of  no  particular  color,  and  so  scanty 
that  they  failed  to  hide  the  skin  beneath,  hung  about  the 
large,  pointed,  rimless  ears  :f  a  noticeable  defect  this  last,  for 
it  is  a  certain  sign  of  cruelty — that  is,  a  love  of  inflicting 
mental  (not  physical)  pain — when  it  does  not  indicate  men- 
tal unsoundness.  An  exaggeratedly  wide  mouth  and  thin 


226  THE  PEASANTRY 

lips  betrayed  their  owner  for  an  undaunted  trencherman 
and  a  valiant  drinker  by  a  certain  droop  at  the  corners,  where 
two  comma-shaped  slits  slobbered  perpetually  while  he  ate  or 
talked.  Heliogabalus  must  have  looked  like  that. 

His  dress  never  varied.  He  always  wore  a  long  blue  over- 
coat with  a  military  collar,  a  black  stock,  a  pair  of  trousers 
and  a  roomy  waistcoat  of  black  cloth.  He  had  hobnails  put 
in  the  heavy  soles  of  his  walking  shoes,  and  in  cold  weather 
he  wore  additional  soles,  knitted  by  his  wife  in  winter  even- 
ings. Annette  and  her  mistress  also  knitted  their  master's 
socks. 

Rigou's  baptismal  name  was  Gregoire,  a  circumstance 
which  suggested  puns  that  his  circle  of  acquaintance  still 
found  irresistibly  amusing,  in  spite  of  thirty  years  of  hard 
wear.  He  was  usually  saluted  as  "Grig"  or  "Rigadoon/'  or 
(and  most,  frequently  of  all)  as  Grigou  (G.  Rigou) — cur- 
mudgeon. 

Want  of  opposition  and  absence  of  any  public  opinion  had 
favored  the  old  Benedictine's  favorite  pursuits.  No  one 
would  imagine  from  the  brief  outline  sketch  of  his  character 
how  far  he  had  advanced  in  the  science  of  selfishness,  of  ma- 
terial comfort,  and  sensual  enjoyment  of  every  kind.  In  the 
first  place,  he  took  his  meals  apart.  His  wife  and  Annette 
waited  upon  him,  and  then  sat  down  to  table  in  the  kitchen 
with  Frere  Jean  while  the  master  of  the  house  digested  his 
meal,  slept  off  his  wine,  and  read  the  paper. 

In  the  country  no  periodical  is  known  by  a  specific  name ; 
it  is  always  spoken  off  as  "the  paper." 

Dinner,  breakfast,  and  supper  were  alike  composed  of 
dishes  exquisitely  prepared  with  the  culinary  skill  in  which 
a  cure's  housekeeper  excels  the  rest  of  her  sisterhood.  Mme. 
Rigou  herself,  for  instance,  churned  twice  a  week.  Cream 
entered  into  every  sauce.  Vegetables,  gathered  at  the  last 
moment,  were  transferred  as  it  were  straight  from  the  gar- 
den into  the  pot.  Parisians  are  so  accustomed  to  garden 
stuff  which  has  lain  sweltering  in  a  shop  exposed  to  the  genial 
influences  of  the  sun,  the  tainted  air  of  city  streets,  and  the 


THE  PEASANTRY  227 

greengrocer's  watering-can,  all  promotive  of  a  specious  fresh- 
ness, that  they  have  no  idea  of  the  delicate,  fugitive  flavors 
of  vegetable  products  when  eaten  in  some  sort  "alive." 

The  Soulanges  butcher  supplied  his  best  meat,  under  pen- 
alty of  losing  the  redoubtable  Eigou's  custom.  The  poultry 
were  reared  at  the  house,  to  ensure  superlative  excellence. 

A  kind  of  hypocritical  care  was  likewise  expended  on 
everything  that  conduced  to  Eigou's  comfort.  The  deeply- 
versed  Thelemist  might  wear  slipppers  of  coarse-looking 
leather,  but  within  they  were  lined  with  the  softest  lamb's- 
wool.  His  coat  might  be  rough  and  coarse,  for  it  never 
touched  his  skin,  but  his  shirts  (always  washed  at  home) 
were  of  the  finest  Frisian  lawn.  The  wine  of  the  country 
was  good  enough  for  his  wife,  Annette,  and  Frere  Jean — 
Eigou  kept  some  of  his  own  vintage  for  this  purpose — but 
his  own  private  cellar  was  stocked  like  a  Fleming's;  the 
noblest  wines  of  Burgundy  were  tightly  packed  among  wines 
from  the  Ehone,  and  Bordeaux,  Champagne,  and  Eoussillon, 
and  Spain.  All  these  were  purchased  ten  years  in  advance, 
and  bottled  by  Frere  Jean.  The  liqueurs  from  the  Indies 
bore  the  name  of  Mme.  Amphoux ;  the  money-lender  had  laid 
in  sufficient  of  these  from  the  wreckage  of  a  Burgundian 
chateau  to  last  him  the  term  of  his  natural  life. 

Eigou  ate  and  drank  like  Louis  XIV.,  one  of  the  largest 
consumers  on  record;  the  wear  and  tear  of  a  life  more  than 
voluptuous  betrayed  itself  in  this  constant  demand  for  re- 
pairs. Yet  while  he  denied  himself  nothing,  he  was  a  keen 
and  hard  bargain-driver;  he  would  haggle  over  every  trifle 
as  only  a  churchman  can  haggle.  He  did  not  trouble  himself 
overmuch,  shrewd  monk  that  he  was,  with  precautions 
against  cheating;  he  provided  himself  with  a  sample  before- 
hand, and  had  the  agreement  made  out  in  writing,  but  when 
the  wine  or  the  provisions  were  despatched  he  gave  the  senders 
notice  that  if  the  bulk  did  not  correspond  in  every  way  with 
the  sample  he  should  refuse  delivery. 

Frere  Jean,  who  looked  after  the  fruit,  had  set  himself  to 
acquire  the  art  of  keeping  the  finest  "orchard  stuff"  in  the 


228  THE  PEASANTRY 

department  through  the  winter.  Eigou  had  pears  and  apples, 
and  occasionally  grapes,  at  Easter. 

Never  was  prophet  on  the  borderland  of  deity  more  blindly 
obeyed  than  Eigou  in  every  smallest  whim.  At  a  twitch  of 
those  heavy  eyelids,  his  wife,  Annette,  and  Frere  Jean  quaked 
for  mortal  fear,  and  of  the  very  multiplicity  of  his  demands 
he  forged  the  chains  that  bound  his  three  slaves.  At  every 
moment  of  their  lives  those  hapless  creatures  felt  conscious 
that  they  were  watched,  that  they  were  under  an  overseer's 
lash ;  and  at  length  they  had  come  to  take  a  kind  of  pleasure 
in  the  incessant  round  of  toil ;  they  were  too  hard-worked  to 
feel  bored,  and  this  man's  comfort  was  the  one  all-absorbing 
thought  that  filled  their  lives. 

Annette  was  the  tenth  in  a  succession  of  comely  maid- 
servants since  the  year  1795.  Eigou  hoped  and  meant  that 
similar  relays  should  mark  his  passage  to  the  tomb.  Annette 
was  sixteen  years  old  when  she  came;  at  the  age  of  nineteen 
she  must  go.  Every  one  of  these  damsels,  chosen  from 
Auxerre,  Clamecy  and  the  Morvan  with  fastidious  care,  had 
been  beguiled  by  bright  prospects.  But  Mme.  Eigou  clung 
obstinately  to  life,  and  invariably  when  the  three  years  were 
out  some  squabble  brought  about  by  the  girl's  insolence  to 
her  unhappy  mistress  made  it  imperatively  necessary  to  part 
with  her.  Annette  was  a  masterpiece  of  delicate  beauty, 
bright  and  piquante,  worthy  to  wear  a  ducal  coronet.  She 
was  a  clever  girl  moreover.  Eigou  knew  nothing  of  the  un- 
derstanding between  Annette  and  Jean-Louis  Tonsard, 
which  proves  that  he  was  smitten  with  the  one  pretty  dam- 
sel to  whom  ambition  had  suggested  the  idea  of  flattering  the 
lynx  by  way  of  throwing  dust  in  his  eyes. 

The  uncrowned  Louis  XV.  on  his  side  was  not  wholly 
faithful  to  the  pretty  Annette.  The  peasants  borrow  to  buy 
land  beyond  their  means;  Eigou  held  oppressive  mortgages 
on  these  properties,  and  the  result  of  it  was  that  he  made  a 
harem  of  the  whole  valley  from  Soulanges  to  a  distance  of 
fifteen  leagues  beyond  Conches  in  the  direction  of  Brie,  and 


THE  PEASANTRY  229 

this  at  no  cost  to  himself.  He  needed  only  to  grant  stay  of 
proceedings  as  the  price  of  the  fleeting  pleasures  on  which  age 
often  wastes  its  substance. 

This  sybarite's  life,  therefore,  cost  him  almost  nothing, 
and  Bouret  himself  could  scarce  have  surpassed  it.  Eigou's 
white  slaves  cut  his  hay  and  gathered  his  harvests,  and 
brought  and  stacked  his  firewood.  A  peasant  thinks  little  of 
giving  his  labor,  especially  if  he  can  put  off  the  evil  day  of 
payment  of  interest  in  that  way;  and  though  Eigou  always 
demanded  small  money  payments  as  well  for  a  few  months' 
grace,  he  squeezed  some  manual  service  out  of  his  debtors 
into  the  bargain.  They  submitted  to  this  forced  labor,  this 
corvee  in  all  but  name,  and  thought  that  it  cost  them  noth- 
ing because  they  had  not  to  put  their  hands  into  their  pockets. 
It  sometimes  happened  that  a  peasant  paid  more  than  the 
original  sum  as  interest  on  the  capital  lent. 

Deep  as  a  monk,  silent  as  a  Benedictine  in  travail  of  his 
chronicle,  astute  as  a  priest,  shifty  as  every  miser  is  bound 
to  be,  yet  always  keeping  on  the  windward  side  of  the  law, 
Eigou  might  have  made  a  Tiberius  in  ancient  Eome,  a  Eiche- 
lieu  in  the  days  of  Louis  XIII.,  or  a  Fouche  if  he  had  had  am- 
bition enough  to  assist  the  Convention;  but  in  his  wisdom 
he  chose  to  be  a  Lucullus  in  private  life,  a  miser-sensualist. 
Hatred  gave  zest  to  this  occupation  of  harassing  the  Count; 
he  had  every  means  of  doing  it  thoroughly,  and  it  found  him 
mental  employment.  He  could  move  the  peasants  at  his 
will  by  secret  wires,  and  he  enjoyed  the  game  that  he  played. 
It  was  like  a  living  chess-tournament,  all  the  pawns  were 
alive;  knights  rode  about  on  horseback,  bishops  babbled  like 
old  Fourchon,  the  towers  of  a  feudal  castle  glittered  in  the 
sun,  and  the  queen  was  maliciously  giving  check  to  the  king. 

Every  day  as  Eigou  rose  he  looked  out  of  his  window  at 
the  stately  roof  of  the  Aigues ;  he  could  see  the  smoke  rising 
from  the  lodges  by  those  lordly  gateways,  and  to  himself  he 
would  mutter,  "All  this  shall  be  pulled  down,  I  will  dry  up 
the  streams,  and  cut  down  the  shady  forest."  And  while  he 
hunted  his  large  quarry  he  had  a  more  insignificant  prey. 


230  THE  PEASANTRY 

The  chateau  was  to  fall,  but  the  renegade  flattered  himself 
that  he  would  murder  the  Abbe  Brossette  by  pin-pricks. 

It  is  only  necessary  to  add,  by  way  of  a  final  touch  to  the 
portrait,  that  the  sometime  monk  made  a  practice  of  going 
to  mass,  regretting  that  his  wife  continued  to  live,  and  mani- 
festing a  desire  to  be  reconciled  with  the  Church  so  soon  as 
he  should  be  a  widower.  He  greeted  the  Abbe  Brossette  defer- 
entially when  they  met,  speaking  suavely,  never  allowing  his 
temper  to  get  the  better  of  him.  Indeed,  generally  speaking, 
every  man  who  has  been-  connected  with  the  Church  appears 
to  possess  the  long-suffering  of  an  insect.  To  her  discipline 
her  servants  owe  a  sense  of  decorum  which  has  been  signally 
lacking  among  the  Frenchmen  of  the  last  twenty  years,  and 
which  those  who  look  upon  themselves  as  well-bred  men  do 
not  always  possess.  When  the  Revolution  shook  ecclesiastics 
out  of  their  convents  and  threw  them  upon  the  world,  the 
children  of  the  Church  gave  proof  of  their  superior  training 
by  a  coolness  and  reticence  which  never  forsook  them  even  in 
apostasy. 

That  little  matter  of  the  will  in  1792  had  opened  Gau- 
bertin's  eyes  to  the  depths  of  guile  concealed  by  that  face, 
with  its  taint  of  guileful  hypocrisy,  and  from  that  time  forth 
he  made  a  confidant  of  the  fellow-worshiper  of  the  Golden 
Calf.  When  the  firm  of  Leclercq  was  founded  he  gave  Eigou 
a  hint  to  invest  fifty  thousand  francs  in  the  venture  and 
guaranteed  the  undertaking.  Rigou  became  a  sleeping  part- 
ner of  so  much  the  more  consequence  because  he  left  his 
money  at  compound  interest.  At  the  present  time  his  in- 
terest in  the  house  amounted  to  a  hundred  thousand  francs, 
although  in  1816  he  had  drawn  out  about  eighty  thousand 
to  put  into  the  funds,  an  investment  which  brought  him  in 
seventeen  thousand  francs  per  annum.  Lupin  knew  of  his 
own  knowledge  that  Rigou  had  at  least  a  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  francs  lent  out  in  mortgages  for  small  amounts 
on  large  bits  of  property.  Ostensibly  the  money-lender  de- 
rived a  net  income  of  fourteen  thousand  francs  or  thereabouts 
from  land.  Altogether,  it  was  pretty  plain  that  Rigou's  in- 


THE  PEASANTRY  231 

come  must  amount  to  something  like  forty  thousand  francs, 
but  his  capital  was  an  unknown  x,  a  fourth  term  in  a  propor- 
tion sum  which  baffled  arithmetic,  and  the  devil  alone  knew 
the  ins  and  outs  of  the  jobbery  in  which  Eigou  and  Langlume 
were  concerned. 

The  terrible  money-lender  reckoned  on  another  score  of 
years  of  life,  and  had  invented  a  set  of  hard-and-fast  rules 
for  his  guidance  in  business.  He  never  lent  a  farthing  to 
a  peasant  unless  the  man  was  a  purchaser  of  seven  acres  at  the 
least,  and  had  actually  paid  down  one-half  of  the  purchase- 
money.  Clearly  Eigou  was  well  aware  of  the  weak  spot  in 
our  legislation  with  regard  to  the  expropriation  of  small  par- 
cels of  land,  and  of  the  danger  to  the  Inland  Eevenue  De- 
partment and  the  land-owning  interest  arising  from  the  ex- 
cessive sub-division  of  property.  Where  is  the  sense  of  suing 
a  peasant  for  the  value  of  a  single  furrow  when  the  man  has 
but  five  furrows  altogether?  The  eyes  of  individual  interest 
will  always  see  twenty-five  years  ahead  of  the  furthest  vision 
of  any  legislative  assembly.  What  a  lesson  for  a  nation!  A 
law  that  is  not  a  dead  letter  always  springs  from  the  mighty 
brain  of  a  single  man  of  genius,  it  is  not  made  by  laying  nine 
hundred  heads  together;  no  matter  how  able  the  men  may 
be,  taken  apart,  they  dwarf  each  other  in  a  crowd.  After  all, 
in  Eigou's  rule  is  there  not  the  right  principle  ?  What  better 
means  have  we  of  putting  a  stop  to  the  present  state  of  things, 
when  land-owning  is  reduced  to  an  absurdity,  and  a  square 
yard  of  soil  is  divided  into  halves  and  thirds,  and  quarters 
and  tenths,  as  in  the  commune  of  Argenteuil,  which  numbers 
thirty  thousand  parcels  of  land? 

Such  reforms,  however,  demand  co-operation  as  wide- 
spread as  the  arrangement  which  oppressed  this  arrondisse- 
ment.  As  Eigou  found  Lupin  about  one-third  of  the  total 
amount  of  legal  business  which  he  transacted,  it  was  natural 
that  the  Soulanges  notary  should  be  Eigou's  faithful  ally. 
In  this  way  the  pirate  could  add  the  amount  of  illegal  interest 
to  the  capital  in  the  bond,  and  if  the  borrower  was  a  married 
man  he  was  careful  to  make  husband  and  wife  jointly  and 


232  THE  PEASANTRY 

severally  responsible.  The  peasant,  overjoyed  to  have  but 
five  per  cent  to  pay,  so  long  as  the  loan  was  undischarged, 
always  hoped  to  rid  himself  of  the  debt  by  unsparing  toil, 
and  by  high  farming  which  raised  the  value  of  Eigou's  se- 
curity. 

This  is  the  real  secret  of  the  wonders  worked  by  the  "spade 
husbandry"  that  deludes  superficial  economists,  a  political 
blunder  which  sends  French  money  into  Germany  to  pay  for 
horses.  That  animal  is  in  process  of  extinction  in  France, 
while  the  grazing  and  breeding  of  horned  cattle  has  fallen  off 
to  such  an  extent  that  butcher  meat  will  soon  be  beyond  the 
reach,  not  merely  of  the  working  population,  but  also  of  the 
class  above  them.* 

So  sweat  poured  for  Eigou  from  many  a  brow  between 
Conches  and  Ville-aux-Fayes,  and  Eigou  was  respected  by 
everybody;  while  the  General,  who  paid  his  workers  well 
and  was  the  one  man-  who  brought  money  into  the  country, 
was  cursed  for  his  pains  and  hated  as  the  rich  man  is  hated 
of  the  poor.  Would  such  a  state  of  things  be  comprehensible 
but  for  the  foregoing  bird's-eye  view  of  Mediocracy  ? 

Fourchon  had  spoken  truth  when  he  said  that  the  bourgeois 
had  taken  the  place  of  the  seigneurs.  Peasant-proprietors 
of  the  Courtecuisse  type  were  the  serfs-  of  a  modern  Tiberius 
in  the  valley  of  the  Avonne,  just  as,  in  Paris,  the  manufac- 
turer without  capital  must  slave  for  the  large  capitalist's 
benefit. 

Soudry  followed  Eigou's  example.  His  area  extended  from 
Soulanges  to  Ville-aux-Fayes,  and  five  leagues  beyond;  the 
two  money-lenders  had  divided  the  district  between  them. 

Gaubertin's  greed  was  on  a  grander  scale.  N"ot  merely  did 
he  himself  avoid  competition  with  his  associates,  but  he  di- 
verted the  capital  of  Ville-aux-Fayes  from  these  profitable 
local  investments.  The  power  exercised  at  elections  by  this 
triumvirate  may  be  imagined  when  nearly  every  voter's  for- 
tunes depended  upon  his  complacence. 

Hatred,  ability,  and  command  of  money — this  was  the  for- 

*  See  Le  Curt  de  Village, 


THE  PEASANTRY  233 

midable  triangular  array  of  the  enemy  entrenched  by  the 
Aigues,  an  enemy  who  watched  all  the  General's  movements, 
an  enemy  in  constant  communication  with  sixty  to  eighty 
small  proprietors,  each  of  whom  had  relatives  or  connections 
among  the  peasantry,  who  feared  one  and  all  of  them  as 
debtors  fear  a  creditor. 

Eigou  was  a  Tonsard  of  a  larger  growth.  Tonsard  lived 
by  plain  theft.  Eigou  grew  fat  on  legalized  robbery.  Both 
were  fond  of  good  living;  both  men  were  essentially  of  the 
same  species,  but  the  one  was  nature  uncultivated,  the  other, 
nature  submitted  to  the  sharpening  discipline  of  the  cloister. 

It  was  about  four  o'clock  that  afternoon  when  Vaudoyer 
left  the  Grand-I-Vert  to  ask  counsel  of  the  ex-mayor,  and 
Eigou  dined  at  four.  Vaudoyer,  finding  the  house  door  shut, 
peered  in  between  the  window-curtains. 

"M.  Eigou !"  he  called.     "It  is  I— Vaudoyer/' 

Frere  Jean  came  out  of  the  yard  gate  in  another  moment, 
and  bade  him  come  in  with  him. 

"Come  into  the  garden,"  said  he,  "the  master  has  com- 
pany." 

The  "company"  was  none  other  than  Sibilet,  who  had  come 
under  the  pretext  of  arriving  at  an  understanding  with 
regard  to  Brunei's  recent  notice  of  judgment ;  but  as  a  matter 
of  fact  the  pair  were  discussing  a  very  different  matter.  He 
had  come  in  just  as  the  usurer  was  finishing  his  dessert. 

A  dazzling  white  cloth  was  spread  on  the  square  table 
(Eigou  insisted  on  clean  table-linen  every  day,  caring  little 
for  the  trouble  given  to  his  wife 'and  Annette),  and  the  visitor 
beheld  the  arrival  of  a  bowl  heaped  up  with  strawberries  and 
apricots,  peaches,  figs,  almonds,  and  all  the  fruits  in  season, 
served,  almost  as  daintily  as  at  the  Aigues,  upon  green  vine- 
leaves,  laid  on  white  porcelain  plates. 

When  Sibilet  came  into  the  room,  Eigou  bade  him  bolt  the 
double  doors  (an  arrangement  adapted  to  every  room  in  the 
house,  with  the  double  object  of  keeping  out  draughts  and 
deadening  sounds).  Then  he  inquired  what  urgent  business 


234  THE  PEASANTRY 

had  brought  the  steward  in  broad  daylight,  when  it  was  sa 
much  simpler  and  safer  to  come  after  dark. 

"It  is  this,"  said  Sibilet.  "Here  is  the  Upholsterer  talking 
of  going  to  Paris  to  see  the  Keeper  of  the  Seals.  He  is  capa- 
ble of  doing  you  a  lot  of  harm ;  he  may  ask  to  have  your  son- 
in-law  displaced,  or  for  a  change  of  judges  and  president  too 
at  Ville-aux-Fayes,  more  particularly  when  he  comes  to  read 
the  notice  of  this  new  decision  in  your  favor.  He  is  in  a 
towering  rage.  He  is  shrewd  too,  and  the  Abbe  Brossette  who 
advises  him  is  one  that  can  enter  the  lists  against  you  and 
Gaubertin. — The  priests  are  in  power  just  now,  and  his  lord- 
ship the  bishop  is  very  friendly  with  the  Abbe  Brossette.  The 
Countess  said  something  about  speaking  to  her  cousin  (the 
Comte  de  Casteran)  concerning  Nicolas.  Then  Michaud  is 
beginning  to  see  how  the  land  lies." 

"You  are  afraid,"  said  Rigou.  The  words  were  spoken 
quite  blandly,  but  the  glance  that  accompanied  them  was  ap- 
palling; suspicion  brought  something  like  a  gleam  into  the 
dull  eyes.  "Are  you  calculating  whether  it  would  pay  you 
better  to  throw  in  your  lot  with  M.  le  Comte  de  Monteornet  ?" 

"I  don't  exactly  see  how  I  am  to  come  honestly  by  four 
thousand  francs  every  year  to  put  by,  as  I  have  been  doing 
these  last  five  years,"  said  Sibilet  bluntly.  "M.  Gaubertin 
has  promised  me  all  sorts  of  fine  things,  but  matters  are  com- 
ing to  a  head,  there  will  certainly  be  a  collision,  and  it  is  one 
thing  to  promise,  and  another  to  keep  your  promise  after  the 
battle  is  won." 

"I  will  speak  to  him,"  said  Rigou  quietly,  "and  in  the 
meantime  this  is  what  I  should  say  if  it  were  any  business 
of  mine. — Tor  the  last  five  years  you  have  been  taking  four 
thousand  francs  a  year  to  M.  Rigou,  and  he,  worthy  man, 
is  paying  you  seven  and  a  half  per  cent  per  annum.  At  this 
present  moment  you  have  twenty-seven  thousand  francs  stand- 
ing to  your  credit,  for  the  money  has  been  accumulating  at 
compound  interest ;  but  as  there  is  a  certain  document  under 
private  seal  extant,  and  M.  Rigou  has  a  duplicate  copy,  the 
steward  of  the  Aigues  will  be  dismissed  on  the  day  when  the 


THE  PEASANTRY  235 

Abbe  Brossette  lays  that  document  before  the  Upholsterer, 
more  especially  if  an  anonymous  letter  is  sent  beforehand  to 
warn  him  that  his  steward  is  playing  a  double  game.  So 
you  would  do  better  to  hunt  with  us,  without  asking  for  your 
bone  in  advance,  and  so  much  the  more  so  since  that  M. 
Kigou  is  not  legally  bound  to  pay  you  either  compound  in- 
terest or  seven  and  a  half  per  cent  on  your  money;  and  if 
you  tried  to  recover,  he  would  let  you  sue  him  and  pay  the 
money  into  court;  and  before  you  could  touch  your  twenty 
thousand  francs  the  matter  would  be  spun  out  with  delays 
till  judgment  was  given  in  the  court  of  Ville-aux-Fayes. 
If  you  behave  yourself  discreetly,  when  M.  Eigou  is  owner 
of  your  house  at  the  Aigues  property,  you  might  keep  on  there 
with  thirty  thousand  francs  of  your  own,  and  thirty  thousand 
more  which  he  might  feel  disposed  to  lend  you;  and  that 
would  be  so  much  the  better  for  you,  because  as  soon  as  the 
Aigues  is  split  up  into  little  lots,  the  peasants  will  be  down 
upon  them  like  poverty  upon  the  world.'  That  is  what  M. 
Gaubertin  might  say  to  you;  but  for  my  own  part  I  have 
nothing  to  say,  it  is  no  business  of  mine. — Gaubertin  and  I 
have  our  grounds  for  complaint  against  this  child  of  the 
people  who  beats  his  own  father,  and  we  are  carrying  out  our 
own  ideas.  If  friend  Gaubertin  needs  you,  I  myself  have  need 
of  nobody,  for  every  one  is  very  much  at  my  service.  As  to  the 
Keeper  of  the  Seals,  'tis  an  office  that  changes  hands  pretty 
often,  while  some  of  us  are  always  here." 

"At  any  rate,  you  have  had  warning,"  said  Sibilet,  feeling 
that  he  had  been  a  consummate  ass. 

"Of  what?"  demanded  Eigou,  with  artful  subtlety. 

"Of  the  Upholsterer's  intentions,"  said  the  steward  meekly ; 
"he  has  gone  to  the  prefecture  in  a  towering  rage." 

"Let  him  go.  If  Montcornet  and  his  like  did  not  wear 
out  carriage-wheels,  what  would  become  of  the  coach- 
builders  ?" 

"I  will  bring  you  three  thousand  francs  to-night  at  eleven 
o'clock,"  said  Sibilet;  "but  you  might  help  me  on  a  little 

by  making  over  one  of  your  mortgages  to  me ;  one  where  the 
VOL.  10 — 41 


236  THE  PEASANTRY 

man  is  getting  behind-hand — one  that  might  bring  me  one 
or  two  nice  little  bits  of  land " 

"There  is  Courtecuisse's  mortgage.  I  want  to  handle  him 
carefully,  for  he  is  the  best  shot  in  the  department.  If  I 
transferred  him  to  you,  it  would  look  as  though  the  Uphol- 
sterer were  harassing  the  rascal  through  you,  and  that  would 
kill  two  birds  with  one  stone.  He  would  be  ready  for  any- 
thing when  he  saw  that  he  was  sinking  lower  than  old  Four- 
chon.  Courtecuisse  is  wearing  his  life  out  at  the  Bachelerie ; 
he  has  been  putting  in  espaliers  along  the  garden  walls,  and 
altogether  the  place  has  improved  very  much.  The  little  farm 
is  worth  four  thousand  francs;  the  Count  would  give  you 
that  much  for  the  three  acres  of  land  behind  his  stables.  If 
Courteeuisse  were  not  a  gormandizing  rogue,  he  would  have 
paid  the  interest  with  the  game  killed  there." 

"Very  well.  Transfer  the  mortgage  to  me;  it  will  put 
butter  on  my  bread.  I  shall  have  the  house  and  garden  for 
nothing,  and  the  Count  will  buy  the  three  acres." 

"What  am  I  to  have  ?" 

"Good  Lord !  you  would  draw  blood  from  a  stone !"  cried 
Sibilet.  "And  here  have  I  just  got  an  order  out  of  the  Up- 
holsterer to  set  the  law  in  motion  to  regulate  the  gleaning." 

"You  have  gained  that  point,  have  you,  my  lad?"  asked 
Eigou,  who  had  himself  suggested  the  idea  to  Sibilet  a  few 
days  previously,  and  recommended  him  to  pass  it  on  in  the 
shape  of  advice  to  the  General.  "We  have  him  now!  It  is 
all  over  with  him  !  But  it  is  not  enough  simply  to  have  a  hold 
on  him ;  he  must  be  twisted  up  like  a  quid  of  tobacco.  Just 
draw  the  bolts,  my  lad,  and  tell  my  wife  to  bring  in  coffee 
and  liqueurs  for  me,  and  tell  Jean  to  put  the  horse  in.  I  am 
going  over  to  Soulanges.  See  you  again  in  the  evening! — 
Good-day,  Vaudoyer,"  the  ex-mayor  beheld  his  former  rural 
policeman.  "Well,  what  is  it?" 

Vaudoyer  gave  a  full  account  of  the  day's  events  at  the 
Grand-I-Vert,  and  ended  by  asking  Eigou  whether  the  Gen- 
eral had  the  law  on  his  side. 

"He  has  a  right  to  do  so,"  said  Eigou  decisively.    "We  have 


THE  PEASANTRY  237 

a  hard  lord  of  the  manor,  and  the  Abbe  Brossette  is  a  shrewd 
fellow.  Your  cure  put  these  notions  into  his  head,  because 
you  don't  go  to  mass,  you  pack  of  heretics !  /  am  careful  to 
go  myself.  There  is  a  God,  you  see ! — You  will  have  to  drink 
to  the  dregs,  the  Upholsterer  will  always  be  beforehand  with 
you " 

"Very  good.  We  will  glean,"  said  Vaudoyer,  in  the  dogged 
tone  of  a  Burgundian. 

"Without  a  pauper's  certificate?"  queried  the  usurer. 
"They  say  that  he  has  gone  to  the  prefecture  to  ask  for  the 
soldiers  so  as  to  make  you  return  to  your  duty — 

"We  will  glean  as  we  have  done  in  the  past,"  Vaudoyer  re- 
peated. 

"Glean!  M.  Sarcus  will  see  if  you  are  right,"  said  the 
money-lender,  and  his  manner  seemed  to  promise  that  the 
justice  of  the  peace  would  protect  the  gleaners. 

"We  will  glean,  and  we  shall  be  there  in  force — or  Bur- 
gundy will  no  longer  be  Burgundy,"  said  Vaudoyer.  "If  the 
gendarmes  have  swords,  we  have  scythes,  and  we  shall  see !" 

At  half -past  four  the  great  green-painted  yard-gates  of  the 
old  parsonage  turned  on  their  hinges,  Frere  Jean  appeared 
leading  the  bay  horse  by  the  bridle,  and  the  chaise  turned  out 
into  the  square.  Mme.  Eigou  and  Annette  stood  on  the  step 
in  front  of  the  house  door  watching  the  little  green  basket- 
chaise  and  the  master  ensconced  on  the  snug  cushions  under 
the  leather  hood. 

"Don't  stay  out  late,  sir,"  said  Annette,  with  a  little  pout 
of  the  lips. 

By  this  time  all  the  village  had  heard  of  the  mayor's  threat- 
ened proclamation,  and  the  folk  came  to  their  doors,  or  stop- 
ped short  in  the  main  street,  to  watch  Kigou  pass.  They 
thought  that  he  was  going  to  Soulanges  to  defend  their  rights. 

"Well,  well,  Mme.  Courtecuisse,  our  old  mayor  will  be  going 
to  take  our  part,  no  doubt,"  said  an  old  woman  with  a  spindle 
in  her  hands;  she  was  deeply  interested  in  the  question  of 
forest  rights,  for  her  husband  sold  the  stolen  faggots  in  Sou- 
langes. 


238  THE  PEASANTRY 

"Dear  me !  yes ;  it  makes  his  heart  bleed  to  see  such  things 
going  on,  he  is  as  sorry  about  it  as  any  of  you,"  answered 
Courtecuisse's  wife.  Poor  woman,  she  quaked  at  the  bare 
mention  of  the  money-lender's  name,  and  praised  him  from 
sheer  fear  and  trembling. 

"Ah !  I  don't  want  to  make  too  much  of  it ;  but  he  has  been 
badly  treated,  he  has !— Good-day,  M.  Eigou,"  said  the  old 
woman  as  she  span,  for  Eigou  gave  a  greeting  to  her  as  well 
as  to  his  creditor's  wife. 

The  money-lender  crossed  the  Thune  (never  impassable  in 
the  worst  of  weather),  and  Tonsard,  stirring  abroad,  spoke 
to  Eigou  on  the  road.  "Well,  Father  Eigou,  so  the  Uphol- 
sterer means  to  make  slaves  of  us,  does  he  ?" 

"We  shall  see  about  that,"  returned  Eigou,  touching  up  his 
horse. 

"He  will  find  a  way  of  defending  us,  he  will !"  said  Tonsard 
to  a  group  of  women  and  children  who  had  gathered  about 
him. 

"Oh !  he  has  you  in  mind ;  an  innkeeper  has  his  gudgeons 
in  mind  as  he  cleans  his  frying-pan,"  remarked  Fourchon. 

"You  just  keep  your  clapper  quiet  when  you  are  drunk," 
said  Mouche,  with  a  tug  at  his  grandfather's  blouse,  which 
sent  the  old  man  over  onto  the  mound  at  the  foot  of  a  poplar. 
"If  the  rascally  monk  heard  what  you  said,  he  would  not  give 
so  much  for  your  words " 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  real  cause  of  Eigou's  hasty  visit 
to  Soulanges  was  the  weighty  news  which  Sibilet  had  brought, 
news  that  seemed  to  threaten  the  secret  coalition  among  the 
bourgeoisie  of  the  Avonne  valley. 


A  tug  at  his  grandfather's  blouse,  which  sent  the  old  man  over 
on  the  mound 


BOOK  II 
I 

THE  BEST  SOCIETY  OF  SOULANGES 

Six  kilometers  from  Blangy,  "be  the  same  more  or  less''' 
(to  borrow  the  legal  formula),  and  at  a  like  distance  from 
Yille-aux-Fayes,  the  little  town  of  Soulanges  rises  amphi- 
theatre-fashion up  a  hillside,  a  spur  of  the  long  cote  which 
runs  parallel  to  the  other  ridge  above  the  Avohne.  Soulanges 
the  Picturesque,  as  they  call  it,  has  a  better  claim  to  the  title 
than  Mantes  itself. 

Under  this  long  low  hill  the  Thune  widens  out  over  a  bed 
of  clay  into  a  sheet  of  water  some  thirty  acres  in  extent,  with 
all  the  mills  of  Soulanges  dotted  over  the  little  cluster  of 
islands  at  the  end,  composing  a  picture  as  charming  as  any 
that  the  landscape  gardener's  art  can  devise.  Further  yet 
the  Thune  feeds  all  the  rivers  and  artificial  water  in  Sou- 
langes park,  and  flows  at  last  through  a  stately  channel  to  join 
the  Avonne. 

Opposite  the  town  stands  the  chateau  of  Soulanges,  one  of 
the  finest  manor  houses  in  Burgundy,  built  in  the  reign  of 
Louis  XIV.  from  Mansard's  designs.  The  local  road  winds 
between  the  town  and  the  aforesaid  sheet  of  water,  vainglori- 
ously  dubbed  "the  Lake  of  Soulanges"  by  the  townspeople. 

The  picturesqueness  of  the  little  place  is  Swiss  rather  than 
French  in  character;  you  shall  scarcely  find  such  another 
town  in  France.  Blondet,  it  may  be  remembered,  compared 
it  in  his  letter  to  Swiss  scenery,  and,  in  fact,  it  reminds  you 
of  the  charming  outskirts  of  Neuchatel,  the  gay  vineyards 
that  engirdle  Soulanges  heightening  a  resemblance  which 
would  be  complete  but  for  the  absence  of  Alps  or  Jura  range. 
The  streets  rise  one  above  another  on  the  hillside ;  the  houses 
stand  apart  in  separate  gardens,  so  that  the  general  effect 

(239) 


240  THE  PEASANTRY 

of  the  town  is  not  the  usual  one  of  a  crowd  of  dwellings 
packed  together,  but  of  masses  of  greenery  and  blue  or  red 
roofs  among  the  flowers  and  trees,  pleached  alleys,  and  ter- 
raced walks,  of  many-colored  detail  blended  into  a  picturesque 
whole. 

In  the  Middle  Ages  the  lords  of  Soulanges,  in  their  munifi- 
cence, built  the  church  of  stone,  reserving  for  themselves  a 
chapel  in  the  choir  and  another  chapel  in  the  crypt  for  their 
family  vault.  A  border  of  richly  ornamented  circles  filled 
with  small  carved  figures  follows  the  outline  of  the  great  arch 
of  the  doorway  (as  at  the  church  of  Longjumeau),  and  a 
shaft  terminating  in  a  pinnacle  stands  in  a  niche  on  either 
side.  Up  above,  in  a  triglyph,  sits  a  sculptured  Virgin  with 
the  Infant  Saviour  in  her  arms.  It  is  a  kind  of  doorway 
common  enough  among  such  little  churches  of  that  date  as 
have  had  the  luck  to  escape  the  ravages  of  the  Calvinists. 
The  outer  walls  of  the  aisles  consist  of  five  arches,  outlined 
by  mouldings,  and  filled  with  masonry  pierced  here  and  there 
by  windows.  The  flying  buttresses  of  the  apse  are  worthy  of  a 
cathedral.  The  square-based  belfry  tower,  built  over  one  of 
the  chancels,  is  a  landmark  in  the  countryside,  for  the  church 
stands  at  the  upper  end  of  the  great  market-place  at  Sou- 
langes, through  which  the  road  passes  on  its  lowest  side. 

This  market-place  at  Soulanges  is  a  fair-sized  open  space 
surrounded  by  a  collection  of  quaint-looking  houses  built 
about  it  at  various  times.  A  good  few  of  them  are  built  half 
of  brick,  half  of  timber,  with  a  waistband  of  slates  about  their 
middles  to  protect  the  principal  beams.  These  have  stood 
there  since  the  Middle  Ages.  Others,  built  of  stone  and 
adorned  with  balconies,  display  the  gable  beloved  of  our 
grandsires,  which  dates  back  as  far  as  the  twelfth  century. 
Several  attract  your  eyes  by  their  quaint  jutting  beams  cov- 
ered with  grotesque  figures,  which  call  up  memories  of  the 
times  when  every  burgher  was  a  merchant  and  lived  above 
his  shop.  But  most  magnificent  of  all  is  the  sculptured  facade 
of  the  ancient  mansion-house  of  the  Bailiwick,  standing  in  a 
line  with  the  church,  to  which  it  furnishes  a  worthy  com- 


THE  PEASANTRY  241 

panion  building.  This  old  house  was  sold  by  the  nation  and 
bought  by  the  commune,  to  do  duty  as  town  hall,  mayor's 
office,  and  court-house,  for  M.  Sarcus  had  sat  there  since  the 
institution  of  justices  of  the  peace. 

This  outline  sketch  will  give  the  reader  some  idea  of  the 
market-square  of  Soulanges,  where  the  charming  central 
fountain  stands  which  the  Marechal  de  Soulanges  brought 
from  Italy  in  1520.  No  great  city  need  blush  to  own  such  a 
monument.  A  jet  of  water,  brought  from  a  spring  high  up 
on  the  hillside,  plays  perpetually  over  a  group  of  four  white 
marble  Cupids,  who  wear  a  basket  full  of  grapes  on  their 
heads,  and  distribute  the  water  from  the  conch  shells  in  their 
hands. 

Perhaps  Emile  Blondet  is  the  last  lettered  traveler  who 
will  pass  that  way ;  but  if  in  the  coming  time  another  should 
penetrate  to  Soulanges,  he  will  at  once  recognize  in  the 
market-square,  the  "public  place"  of  Spanish  drama  and 
Moliere's  plays,  an  old  familiar  piece  of  stage  scenery,  and 
abiding  witness  to  the  fact  that  comedy  is  the  invention  of 
a  warm  climate,  where  the  business  of  life  is  largely  carried 
on  out  of  doors  and  in  public.  The  market-place  at  Sou- 
langes resembles  the  conventional  square  of  the  stage  the  more 
closely  in  that  the  two  principal  streets  of  the  town  enter  it 
from  either  side  just  opposite  the  fountain,  furnishing  an 
exact  equivalent  of  the  wings  whence  masters  and  servants 
issue  to  meet,  and  whither  they  fly  to  avoid  each  other. 

At  the  corner  of  one  of  these  streets,  Maitre  Lupin's 
scutcheon  hung,  gloriously  conspicuous.  The  square  is  the 
aristocratic  quarter  of  Soulanges;  Sarcus,  Guerbet  the  re- 
ceiver of  taxes,  Brunet,  Gourdon  the  registrar,  and  his  brother 
the  doctor,  and  old  M.  Gendrin-Vattebled,  Crown  Agent  of 
Woods  and  Forests,  all  lived  round  about  it,  and  being  mind- 
ful of  the  name  given  their  town,  all  made  a  point  of  keeping 
their  houses  in  handsome  repair. 

"Mme.  Soudry's  house,"  as  it  was  called  (for  the  first  per- 
son in  the  commune  was  totally  eclipsed  by  the  potent  per- 
sonality of  the  late  Mile.  Laguerre's  waiting- woman) — Mme. 


242  THE  PEASANTRY 

Soudry's  house  was  entirely  modern.  It  had  been  built  by 
a  wealthy  wine  merchant,  a  Soulanges  man  who  had  made 
money  in  Paris  and  returned  in  1793  to  buy  corn  for  his 
native  town.  The  mob  massacred  him  for  a  "regrater,"  a 
miserable  stonemason  (Godain's  uncle)  having  raised  the  cry 
after  a  dispute  which  arose  out  of  the  building  of  the  fine  new 
house. 

The  next-of-kin  quarreled  so  long  and  heartily  over  the 
property,  that  when  Soudry  came  back  in  1798  he  was  able 
to  buy  the  wine  merchant's  palace  for  one  thousand  crowns 
in  coin.  He  let  it  at  first  to  the  department  for  a  police- 
station;  but  in  1811  Mile.  Cochet  (whom  he  consulted  on  all 
points)  warmly  opposed  a  renewal  of  the  lease;  it  was  impos- 
sible to  live  in  a  house  "in  concubinage  with  the  barracks," 
she  said.  So  a  police-station  was  built  in  a  side  street  close  to 
the  townhall  for  the  gendarmerie,  at  the  expense  of  the  town 
of  Soulanges,  and  the  police-sergeant's  house,  being  relieved 
of  the  defiling  presence  of  the  gendarmerie  and  their  horses, 
was  forthwith  swept  and  garnished. 

It  is  a  single-story  house,  with  attics  in  the  mansard  roof. 
On  three  sides  it  looks  out  over  a  wide  view ;  to  wit,  over  the 
market-place,  the  "lake,"  and  the  garden;  but  the  fourth 
gives  upon  the  yard  which  lies  between  it  and  the  neighboring 
house  of  a  grocer — Wattebled  by  name — a  man  who  did  not 
move  in  the  "best  society"  in  Soulanges.  He  was  the  father 
of  the  "beautiful  Mme.  Plissoud,"  of  whom  more  must  pres- 
ently be  said. 

Every  little  town  has  its  "beautiful  Madame  Such-an-one," 
just  as  it  boasts  its  Socquard  and  its  Cafe  de  la  Paix. 

It  is  easy  to  guess  that  the  side  of  the  house  which  over- 
looks the  lake  likewise  looks  out  upon  the  terraced  garden, 
sloping,  not  over  steeply,  down  to  the  stone  balustrade,  which 
borders  it  along  the  roadside.  On  every  step  of  the  flight 
which  descends  from  the  terrace  to  the  garden  stands  a 
myrtle,  or  pomegranate,  or  an  orange-tree,  visible  justifica- 
tions of  a  small  conservatory  below — a  preservatory,  as  Mme. 
Soudry  persistently  miscalls  it.  The  house  door  on  the  side 


THE  PEASANTRY  243 

of  the  market-place  is  approached  by  a  short  flight  of  steps. 
The  great  gateway  is  seldom  used,  except  on  great  occasions, 
after  the  usual  habit  of  a  country  town,  or  to  admit  the 
trades-people  or  the  master's  horse.  The  friends  of  the  family 
paid  their  calls  on  foot,  and  climbed  the  flight  of  steps  to  the 
street  door. 

The  Soudry  mansion  is  a  dreary-looking  house.  Every 
course  of  masonry  is  marked  cut  by  "channel  joints,"  as 
masons  call  them;  the  mouldings  round  the  windows  are  al- 
ternately thick  and  thin,  after  the  style  of  the  Gabriel  and 
Perronnet  wings  of  the  Tuileries.  Such  architectural  orna- 
ment in  a  very  small  town  gives  a  monumental  look  to  a  house 
already  grown  famous  in  the  district. 

In  the  opposite  corner  of  the  market-place  stood  Socquard's 
celebrated  Cafe  de  la  Paix,  which,  with  the  too  enchanting 
Tivoli,  deserves  a  more  detailed  description  in  its  place  than 
the  Soudry  mansion. 

Eigou  very  seldom  came  to  Soulanges;  for  everybody,  Lu- 
pin the  notary,  Gaubertin,  Soudry,  and  Gendrin  alike  went  to 
Blangy  to  call  on  him — such  fear  men  had  of  Eigou.  But 
any  experienced  person,  and  the  ex-Benedictine  was  experi- 
enced, would  have  imitated  his  reserve.  In  order  to  make 
this  clear,  it  is  necessary  to  give  a  sketch  of  the  personages 
who  were  spoken  of  in  the  neighborhood  as  belonging  to  the 
"best  society  of  Soulanges." 

The  oddest  figure  among  them  all  was,  as  you  may  imagine, 
Mme.  Soudry  herself.  Hers  is  a  portrait  that  demands  an 
infinity  of  minute  touches,  if  it  is  to  do  justice  to  the  original. 

Mme.  Soudry  permitted  herself  "a  suspicion  of  rouge,"  in 
imitation  of  Mile.  Laguerre;  but  that  suspicion,  by  sheer 
force  of  habit,  had  become  an  unmistakable  patch  of  ver- 
milion on  either  cheek,  such  as  our  grandsires  picturesquely 
described  as  "carriage  wheels."  As  the  wrinkles  deepened 
and  multiplied  on  the  mayoress'  countenance,  she  fondly  tried 
to  fill  them  up  with  paint ;  then  finding  that  her  brow  grew 
too  sallow  by  far,  and  her  temple's  showed  time's  polish,  she 
laid  on  ceruse,  and  traced  out  a  network  of  youthful  veins 


244  THE  PEASANTRY 

in  a  delicate  blue.  The  painting  enhanced  the  liveliness  of 
eyes  that  were  bold  enough  already,  insomuch  that  the  mask 
would  have  struck  a  stranger  as  something  passing  strange; 
but  Soulanges,  being  accustomed  to  this  brilliant  display  of 
art,  regarded  Mme.  Soudry  as  a  great  beauty. 

With  a  clumsy  shapeless  figure  she  wore  her  gowns  cut  low 
at  the  throat,  displaying  shoulders  and  bosom  whitened  and 
enameled  to  match  her  face;  but,  luckily,  a  desire  to  flaunt 
her  magnificent  laces  induced  her  to  partially  veil  these  chem- 
ical products.  She  always  wore  a  stiff  corset  bodice  of  pro- 
digious depth,  bedizened  with  knots  even  down  to  the  extreme 
point,  and  her  skirts  rustled  with  silk  and  furbelows. 

Her  apparel  justified  the  use  of  the  word  attire,  which  will 
soon  be  inexplicable.  This  evening  she  wore  brocade  of  price, 
for  she  had  a  hundred  dresses,  each  one  richer  than  the  last, 
all  from  Mme.  Laguerre's  vast  and  splendid  wardrobe,  and 
all  remodeled  by  her  in  the  height  of  the  fashion  of  the  year 
1808.  Mme.  Soudry's  gorgeous  cap,  adorned  with  loops  of 
cherry-colored  satin  to  match  the  ribbons  on  her  gown,  seemed 
to  ride  triumphant  on  the  powdered  waves  of  her  yellow  wig. 

Try  to  imagine  beneath  that  too  fascinating  headgear  a 
monkey  face  of  monstrous  ugliness;  a  snub  nose,  meagre 
enough  for  a  Death's  head,  separated  by  a  broad  space  of 
bristles  from  a  mouthful  of  artificial  teeth  in  which  the 
sounds  were  entangled  as  in  a  hunting-horn — and  though  it 
may  puzzle  you  to  discover  how  the  best  society,  and,  in  fact, 
the  whole  town  of  Soulanges,  could  regard  Mme.  Soudry  as 
a  beauty,  the  mental  process  may  recall  to  your  mind  a  recent 
succinct  treatise  ex  professo  by  one  of  the  wittiest  women  of 
our  day  on  the  art  of  acquiring  a  reputation  for  beauty  by 
the  judicious  selection  and  management  of  accessories. 

Mme.  Soudry  had,  in  the  first  place,  surrounded  herself 
•vith  the  splendid  presents  which  had  been  heaped  upon  her 
mistress — fructus  belli,  as  the  sometime  Benedictine  called 
them.  And,  in  the  second,  she  had  turned  her  ugliness  to 
account  by  emphasizing  it  and  carrying  it  with  a  certain  air 
which  can  only  be  acquired  in  Paris,  a  knack  known  to  the 


THE  PEASANTRY  245 

vulgarest  Parisienne,  who  is  always  more  or  less  of  a  mimic. 
Mme.  Soudry's  figure,  much  restricted  round  the  waist,  was 
enormous  about  the  hips ;  she  wore  diamonds  in  her  ears,  and 
loaded  her  fingers  with  rings ;  and,  by  way  of  final  adornment, 
a  cockchafer,  twin  topazes  with  a  diamond  head,  blazed  from 
the  height  of  her  bodice  in  a  cleft  between  two  mountains 
besprinkled  with  pearl  powder.  This  jewel,  a  gift  from  "dear 
mistress,"  was  the  talk  of  the  department.  Mme.  Soudry's 
arms  were  invariably  bare  (another  practice  copied  from 
Mile.  Laguerre),  and  she  fluttered  an  ivory  fan  painted  by 
Boucher  with  two  tiny  roses  by  way  of  stud-pins. 

When  Mme.  Soudry  walked  abroad  she  carried  a  real  eigh- 
teenth century  parasol  above  her  head,  a  bamboo  frame  cov- 
ered with  green  silk,  and  bordered  with  a  green  fringe ;  thus 
equipped,  any  passer-by  who  should  have  seen  her  on  the  ter- 
race might  have  taken  her  (at  a  sufficient  distance)  for  a 
figure  out  of  one  of  Watteau's  pictures. 

In  that  drawing-room,  hung  with  crimson  brocade  and 
crimson  curtains  lined  with  white  silk,  where  the  chimney 
piece  was  covered  with  knick-knacks  and  souvenirs  of  the 
palmy  days  of  Louis  Quinze,  with  the  fire-dogs  and  andirons 
on  the  hearth  (lily  stems  born  aloft  by  infant  Cupids),  .where 
the  furniture,  a  pieds  de  biche,  was  covered  with  gilding,  it 
was  conceivable  how  the  mistress  of  the  mansion  had  come 
by  the  title  of  "the  beautiful  Mme.  Soudry."  The  house  came 
to  be  a  kind  of  local  superstition  in  the  principal  town  in  the 
district. 

And  if  the  best  society  of  Soulanges  believed  in  its  queen, 
that  queen  had  no  less  belief  in  herself.  In  the  space  of  seven 
years  La  Cochet  had  so  completely  succeeded  in  sinking  the 
lady's-maid  i%n  the  mayoress,  that  not  merely  had  Soulanges 
forgotten  her  late  employment,  but  she  herself  had  begun  to 
believe  that  she  was  a  gentlewoman.  So  well  did  she  remem- 
ber her  mistress'  ways,  her  manner,  her  gestures,  her  falsetto 
voice,  the  little  movements  of  her  head,  that  when  she  sur- 
rounded herself  with  that  mistress'  opulence  she  reproduced 
her  insolence.  Mme.  Soudry  knew  her  eighteenth  century; 


246  THE  PEASANTRY 

she  had  anecdotes  of  great  nobles,  like  their  inter-relation- 
ships, e,t  her  fingers'  ends,  and  her  back-stairs  erudition  pro- 
vided her  with  a  stock  of  conversation  which  smacked  of 
familiarity  with  (Eii-de-bceuf.  Her  waiting-woman's  wit 
passed  current  in  her  circle  for  the  most  refined  esprit.  In- 
trinsically, if  you  will,  the  mayoress  was  a  counterfeit  gem, 
but  how  should  barbarians  know  the  difference  between  the 
diamond  and  its  paste  imitation? 

She,  too,  in  her  own  circle  was  a  divinity,  as  her  mistress 
had  been  in  her  day ;  she  was  flattered  by  those  who  were  sure 
of  a  dinner  at  her  house  once  a  week,  and  of  coffee  and  liqueurs 
if  (as  not  seldom  happened)  they  dropped  in  of  an  evening 
about  the  time  of  dessert.  No  woman's  head  could  have  stood 
the  powerful  intoxicating  influence  of  that  never-failing  in- 
cense. In  the  winter-time,  when  the  cozy  drawing-room  was 
bright  with  the  light  of  wax-candles,  she  saw  it  filled  with  the 
wealthiest  men  in  the  place,  who  repaid  her  in  compliments 
for  delicate  liqueurs  and  exquisite  wines  from  "dear  mis- 
tress' "  cellars.  The  friends  of  the  house  and  their  wives 
had  to  all  intents  and  purposes  the  usufruct  of  this  luxury, 
while  they  economized  in  fuel  and  candle-light.  For  which 
reasons  it  was  proclaimed  for  five  leagues  round  about,  nay, 
at  Ville-aux-Fayes  itself,  when  the  notables  of  the  department 
were  passed  in  review,  that  "Mme.  Soudry  makes  an  admi- 
rable hostess;  she  keeps  open  house,  and  it  is  a  wonderfully 
pleasant  house.  She  understands  how  to  live  up  to  her  for- 
tune. She  can  enjoy  a  joke.  And.  what  handsome  plate ! 
There  is  not  such  another  house  out  of  Paris  !" 

Bouret  had  given  that  plate  to  Mile.  Laguerre.  It  was 
a  splendid  service,  the  work  of  the  great  Germain,  and,  in 
plain  language,  La  Soudry  had  stolen  it ;  when  Mile.  Laguerre 
died,  the  woman  simply  took  it  up  to  her  own  room,  and  the 
next-of-kin,  who  knew  nothing  about  their  property,  could 
never  put  in  a  claim  for  missing  items. 

For  some  little  time  it  had  been  the  fashion  among  the 
twelve  or  fifteen  persons  of  whom  the  "best  society"  in  Sou- 
langes  was  composed  to  speak  of  Mme.  Soudry  as  of  an  "in- 


THE  PEASANTRY  247 

timate  friend  of  Mile.  Laguerre,"  and  to  fight  shy  of  the  word 
"waiting-woman."  To  hear  them  talk,  La  Cochet  might  have 
sacrificed  herself  by  becoming  the  great  actress'  companion. 

Strange,  but  true  it  is,  that  all  these  confirmed  illusions 
spread  and  grew  in  Mme.  Soudry,  till  they  invaded  the  reality- 
requiring  region  of  the  heart.  She  ruled  her  husband  des- 
potically. 

The  gendarme  being  constrained  to  show  fondness  for  a 
wife,  older  than  himself  by  ten  years,  who  kept  the  purse- 
strings  in  her  own  hands,  encouraged  her  in  the  notions 
which  she  entertained  of  her  beauty.  Nevertheless,  r,t  times, 
when  this  one  or  that  envied  him  his  good  fortune,  he  would 
wish  that  they  could  exchange  places  with  him ;  and  he  was  at 
as  great  pains  to  hide  his  peccadilloes  as  if  a  young  and  idol- 
ized wife  were  in  the  case.  Only  within  the  last  few  days  had 
he  contrived  to  introduce  a  pretty  housemaid  into  the  estab- 
lishment. 

Does  the  portrait  of  the  queen  of  Soulanges  seen?  to  be 
something  of  a  caricature?  The  type  might  still  be  found 
here  and  there  in  the  provinces  in  those  days,  among  women 
on  the  outskirts  of  nobility  or  the  higher  regions  of  finance ; 
witness  the  widow  of  a  farmer-general  in  Touraine,  who  still 
applied  fillets  of  veal  to  her  face  in  the  interests  of  her  com- 
plexion. But  the  present  portrait,  painted  to  the  life  though 
it  is,  is  incomplete  without  its  setting  of  brilliants,  and  the 
queen's  principal  courtiers  must  be  sketched,  were  it  only  to 
explain  how  formidable  such  Lilliputians  may  become,  and 
to  throw  light  upon  the  dissemination  of  opinion  in  out-of- 
the-way  places. 

Lest  any  should  be  deceived,,  it  may  be  said  that  there  are 
places  like  Soulanges  which  cannot  be  described  as  either 
city,  town,  or  village,  yet  partake  of  the  nature  of  all  three. 
In  such  places  the  faces  of  the  people  are  quite  different  from 
those  which  you  shall  see  in  the  heart  of  our  good,  overgrown, 
dirty  provincial  cities;  for  the  townsman  is  half  a  country- 
man, and  this  blend  produces  some  of  the  queerest  of  queer 
characters. 


248  THE  PEASANTRY 

Mme.  Soudry  disposed  of,  Notary  Lupin,  steward  of  the 
manor  of  Soulanges,  ranks  second  in  importance;  for  it  is 
scarcely  worth  while  to  mention  old  Gendrin-Vattebled,  the 
Crown  Agent  of  Woods  and  Forests,  a  nonogenarian  on  the 
brink  of  the  grave,  who  had  never  left  his  house  since  the 
advent  of  Mme.  Soudry.  Gendrin-Vattebled  had  reigned 
over  Soulanges  in  his  quality  of  a  man  who  had  held  the 
same  post  since  the  time  of  Louis  XV.,  and  in  his  lucid  in- 
tervals he  still  spoke  of  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Table  de  Mar- 
bre. 

Five-and-forty  springs  had  bloomed  for  Lupin,  but  he  was 
still  fresh  and  pink-complexioned,  thanks  to  the  full  habit 
of  body  which  grows  inevitably  upon  a  man  of  sedentary  life ; 
he  still  sang  his  ballad,  and  wore  the  elegant  costume  of  the 
drawing-room  performer.  In  his  carefully  varnished  boots  and 
waistcoat  of  brimstone  yellow,  his  tight  coats,  rich  silk  stocks, 
and  trousers  in  the  latest  fashion,  Lupin  looked  almost  like 
a  Parisian.  He  had  his  hair  curled  by  the  hairdresser,  who 
fulfilled  the  functions  of  the  Gazette  in  Soulanges,  and  alto- 
gether lived  up  to  the  character  of  lady-killer,  earned  by  an 
intimacy  with  Mme.  Money-Sarcus ;  for,  to  compare  small 
things  with  great,  that  conquest  had  been  in  his  life  pretty 
much  what  the  Campaigns  of  Italy  were  in  the  career  of 
Napoleon.  Lupin  was  the  only  one  of  the  circle  who  went 
to  Paris,  where  he  paid  visits  to  the  Soulanges  family  in. 
town.  He  had  only  to  open  his  mouth,  and  the  supremacy  of 
his  sway  exercised  in  his  double  character  of  coxcomb  and 
man  of  taste  was  at  once  apparent.  He  pronounced  judgment 
on  all  things  by  three  words,  the  positive,  comparative,  and 
superlative  of  dispraise — rusty,  out-of-date,  and  obsolete. 

A  man  or  a  woman  or  a  piece  of  furniture  might  be 
"rusty;"  then,  to  mark  the  comparative  degree  of  futility, 
"out-of-date;"  and  finally,  by  way  of  superlative  and  third 
term,  "obsolete."  Obsolete!  'twas  the  critic's  "dead-and-done- 
with,"  the  domdaniel  of  contempt.  Mere  "rust"  might  be 
rubbed  off,  "out-of-date"  was  past  praying  for;  but  "ob- 
solete!" oh,  better  never  to  have  issued  from  nothingness! 


THE  PEASANTRY  249 

For  praise,  Lupin  was  reduced  to  the  word  "charming," 
redoubled,  if  required.  "Charming !" — that  was  the  positive 
term  of  admiration ;  "charming !  charming !" — you  might  set 
your  mind  at  rest.  "Charming!  charming!  charming!" — 
you  might  throw  down  the  ladder,  for  the  heaven  of  perfec- 
tion had  been  scaled. 

This  scrivener — he  was  wont  to  speak  of  himself  as 
scrivener,  quill-driver,  and  petty  attorney,  jestingly  put- 
ting himself  above  his  calling — this  scrivener  carried  on 
a  flirtation  with  the  mayoress,  who  felt  a  certain  weakness 
for  Lupin,  although  he  had  fair  hair  and  wore  spectacles,  and 
La  Cochet  had  always  admired  -dark  men  with  moustaches, 
and  tufts  upon  their  finger-joints — the  Hercules  type,  in 
short.  But  now  she  made  an  exception  in  Lupin's  favor  on 
account  of  his  elegance,  feeling,  besides,  that  her  social  tri- 
umph in  Soulanges  would  be  incomplete  without  an  adorer; 
though  as  yet,  to  Soudry's  disgust,  none  of  the  queen's 
adorers  had  dared  to  overstep  the  limits  of  respectful  homage. 

Lupin  was  a  baritone,  somewhat  given  to  sample-singing 
in  corners  or  upon  the  terrace,  by  way  of  reminding  the  world 
of  this  social  gift,  a  reef  upon  which  the  socially-gifted  and, 
alas!  sometimes  even  men  of  genius  are  apt  to  make  ship- 
wreck. 

He  had  married  an  heiress  in  sabots  and  blue  stockings, 
the  only  daughter  of  a  salt  merchant  who  made  his  fortune 
during  the  Kevolution,  when  the  reaction  against  the  gabelle 
put  enormous  sums  into  the  pockets  of  salt  smugglers.  Lupin 
prudently  kept  his  wife  in  the  background,  and  Bebelle  was 
sustained  by  a  Platonic  passion  for  his  very  handsome  head- 
clerk,  one  Bonnac,  who  had  nothing  but  his  salary,  and 
played  upon  a  lower  stage  the  part  taken  by  his  employer 
in  the  "best  society." 

Mme.  Lupin's  education  had  been  prodigiously  neglected. 
She  only  appeared  in  public  on  state  occasions,  in  the  form 
of  an  enormous  tun  of  Burgundy  draped  with  velvet,  and 
surmounted  by  a  little  head  deeply  sunk  in  a  pair  of  shoulders 
of  uncertain  hue.  By  no  effort  could  her  girdle  be  induced 


250  THE  PEASANTRY 

to  stay  in  its  natural  place,  and  Bebelle  candidly  admitted 
that  prudence  forbade  her  to  wear  corsets.  It  would 
have -out-tasked  the  imagination  of  a  poet,  nay,  of  an  in- 
ventor, to  discover  in  Bebelle's  back  any  trace  of  the  bewitch- 
ing curves  of  the  vertebral  outline  of  any  woman  who  is  a 
woman. 

Bebelle,  as  round  as  a  tortoise,  belonged  to  some  inverte- 
brate feminine  order.  Her  appalling  development  of  cellular 
tissue  must,  however,  have  been  not  a  little  reassuring  for 
Lupin  whenever  he  thought  of  the  portly  Bebelle's  little  fancy 
— for  "Bebelle"  he  unblushingly  called  her,  and  nobody 
thought  of  laughing. 

"What  do  you  call  your  wife  ?"  Money-Sarcus  inquired  one 
day.  He  could  not  digest  the  "out-of-date"  applied  to  a  new 
piece  of  furniture  which  he  had  bought  as  a  bargain. 

"My  wife,  unlike  yours,  is  still  undefined,"  retorted  Lupin 

A  subtle  brain  lurked  beneath  Lupin's  coarse  exterior;  he 
had  the  sense  to  hold  his  tongue  about  wealth  at  least  as  con- 
siderable as  Rigou's  fortune. 

"Young  Lupin,"  Amaury  Lupin,  was  an  affliction  to  his 
parent.  He  refused  to  follow  the  paternal  calling,  he  became 
one  of  the  Don  Juans  of  the  valley,  and  abused  the  privileges 
of  an  only  son  by  enormous  drains  on  the  cash-box;  yet  he 
never  exceeded  his  father's  indulgence,  for  after  each  fresh 
escapade  Lupin  senior  remarked,  "After  all,  I  was  just  the 
same  in  my  time."  Amaury  never  went  near  Mme.  Soudry, 
who  "plagued  him"  (sic).  Some  memory  had  inspired  the 
waiting-woman  with  the  notion  of  "forming"  a  young  man 
who  sought  his  pleasures  in  the  billiard-room  at  the  Cafe  de 
la  Paix.  Amaury  Lupin  frequented  low  company,  and  even 
the  society  of  such  as  Bonnebault.  He  was  having  his  fling 
(as  Mme.  Soudry  put  it),  and  his  one  answer  to  his  father's 
remonstrances  was  the  cry  of  "Send  me  to  Paris,  I  am  tired 
of  this !" 

Lupin's  fate,  alas !  was  that  of  most  bucks,  a  quasi-conjugal 
entanglement.  It  was  well  known  that  he  was  passionately 
attached  to  Mme.  Euphemie  Plissoud,  whose  husband  was 


THE  PEASANTRY  251 

Brunei's  fellow  clerk  of  the  peace,  and  that  he  had  no  secrets 
from  her.  The  fair  Euphemie,  the  daughter  of  Wattebled 
the  grocer,  reigned,  like  Mme.  Soudry,  in  a  lower  social 
sphere.  Plissoud,  who  was  understood  to  authorize  his  wife's 
conduct,  was  despised  on  this  account  by  the  "best  society/' 
and  regarded  as  second-rate. 

If  Lupin  was  the  vocalist,  Dr.  Gourdon  was  the  man  of 
science  in  the  "best  society."  It  was  said  of  him  that,  "We 
have  here  a  man  of  science  of  the  first  rank;"  and  Mme. 
Soudry,  a  competent  critic  in  matters  musical  (in  that  she 
had  announced  Messieurs  Gluck  and  Piccini  when  they  came 
to  call  of  a  morning  upon  her  mistress,  and  had  dressed  Mile. 
Laguerre  at  the  Opera  at  night) — Mme.  Soudry,  who  had 
persuaded  every  one,  including  Lupin  himself,  that  he  would 
have  made  a  fortune  with  that  voice,  would  deplore  the  fact 
that  the  doctor  had  given  none  of  his  ideas  to  the  world. 

Dr.  Gourdon,  who  took  all  his  ideas  straight  from  Buff  on 
and  Cuvier,  could  scarcely  have  set  himself  up  for  a  man  of 
science  in  the  eyes  of  Soulanges  with  such  an  outfit,  but  he 
was  making  a  collection  of  shells  and  a  hortus  siccus,  and 
could  stuff  birds  to  boot — in  fact,  he  coveted  the  distinction 
of  leaving  a  Natural  History  Museum  to  the  town,  and  on 
these  grounds  he  was  accepted  all  over  the  department  as  a 
second  Buffon. 

In  appearance  Dr.  Gourdon  was  not  unlike  a  Genevese 
banker.  He  had  the  same  air  of  pedantry,  the  same  chilly 
manner  and  puritanical  meekness ;  but  in  his  case  the  money, 
like  the  business  shrewdness,  had  been  omitted.  He  was  wont 
to  exhibit  with  exceeding  complacency  his  famous  natural 
history  collection,  comprising  a  stuffed  bear  and  a  marmot 
(deceased  on  their  passage  through  the  town),  a  very  com- 
plete collection  of  the  local  rodents,  shrew  mice,  field  mice, 
house  mice,  rats,  and  the  like,  together  with  all  the  rare 
birds  shot  in  that  part  of  Burgundy,  and  conspicuous  among 
these  last  an  Alpine  eagle  caught  among  the  Jura.  Gourdon 
also  possessed  a  good  many  specimens  of  lepidoptera — a  word 

which  raised  hopes  of  monstrosities,  so  that  the  reality  was 
VOL.  10 — 42 


252  THE  PEASANTRY 

usually  greeted  with,  "Why,  they  are  butterflies !" — a  very 
pretty  collection  of  fossil  shells,  which  for  the  most  part 
had  come  to  him  by  way  of  bequest ;  and,  to  conclude  the  list, 
a  quantity  of  specimens  of  the  minerals  of  the  Jura  and  Bur- 
gundy. 

The  whole  first  floor  of  Dr.  Gourdon's  house  was  occupied 
by  these  treasures  which  were  established  behind  glass  doors 
in  cupboards,  above  rows  of  drawers  full  of  insects.  Nor  did 
they  fail  to  produce  a  certain  impression,  due  partly  to  the  ec- 
centricities of  the  labels,  partly  to  the  magic  charm  of  color, 
and  partly  also  to  the  vast  number  of  objects  which  no  one 
notices  out  of  doors,  though  they  become  wonderful  as  soon 
as  they  are  set  behind  a  sheet  of  glass.  There  was  a  day  set 
apart  for  going  to  see  Dr.  Gourdon's  collection. 

"I  have  five  hundred  ornithological  specimens,"  he  would 
announce  to  the  curious,  "two  hundred  mammals,  five  thou- 
sand insects,  three  thousand  shells,  and  seven  hundred  speci- 
men minerals." 

"What  patience  you  must  have  had !"  the  ladies  would  ex- 
claim, and  Gourdon  would  reply,  "A  man  ought  to  do  some- 
thing for  his  native  place." 

Gourdon's  vanity  drew  a  prodigious  toll  from  his  dead 
beasts  and  birds  by  the  remark,  "All  this  has  been  left  to  the 
town  in  my  will;"  and  how  his  visitors  admired  his  "philan- 
thropy !"  They  talked  of  devoting  the  whole  second  floor  of 
the  townhall  (after  the  doctor's  death)  to  the  housing  of 
the  Gourdon  Museum. 

"I  count  on  the  gratitude  of  my  fellow-townsmen  to  as- 
sociate my  name  with  my  collection,"  he  would  say  in  reply 
to  this  suggestion,  "for  I  do  not  dare  to  hope  that  they  will 
set  my  bust  there  in  marble " 

"Why,  surely  that  would  be  the  least  that  they  could  do 
for  you !"  would  be  the  answer,  "are  you  not  the  glory  of 
Soulanges  ?"  And  in  the  end  the  man  came  to  look  upon  him- 
self as  one  of  the  great  men  of  Burgundy. 

The  safest  investments  are  not  the  public  funds,  but  those 
which  are  inscribed  in  the  name  of  self-love,  and  the  learned 


THE  PEASANTRY  253 

naturalist,   on  Lupin's  grammatical   system,  might  be   de- 
scribed as  a  "happy,  happy,  happy  man!" 

Gourdon,  his  brother,  the  registrar  of  the  court,  was  a  little 
weasel-faced  man.  All  his  features  seemed  to  have  crowded 
themselves  together  in  the  neighborhood  of  his  neck,  in  such 
a  sort  that  his  nose  was  a  kind  of  starting-point  whence  the 
various  lines  of  forehead,  cheek,  and  mouth  went  their  various 
ways,  much  as  all  the  ravines  on  a  mountain  side  begin  at  its 
summit.  He  was  one  of  the  great  poets  of  Burgundy,  a  sec- 
ond Piron,  so  it  was  said.  The  double  merit  of  the  brothers 
attracted  notice  in  the  chief  town  of  the  department. 

"We  have  the  two  brothers  Gourdon  at  Soulanges,"  it  was 
said,  "two  very  remarkable  men,  men  who  would  more  than 
hold  their  own  in  Paris." 

The  poet  was  an  exceedingly  dexterous  player  at  cup-and- 
ball,  a  mania  which  bred  another  mania,  for  it  inspired  him 
with  the  idea  of  celebrating  in  verse  a  game  which  had  so 
great  a  vogue  in  the  eighteenth  century.  (The  manias  of 
mediocracy  are  apt  to  appear  in  pairs.)  Gourdon  junior  was 
delivered  of  his  poem  during  the  time  of  Napoleon,  so  it  is 
needless  to  mention  the  sound  and  sensible  school  to  which  he 
belonged.  Luce  de  Lancival,  Parny,  Saint-Lambert,  Koucher, 
Vigee,  Andrieux,  and  Berchoux  were  his  heroes,  and  Delille 
was  his  idol  until  the  day  when  the  best  society  in  Soulangea  -, 
raised  the  question  whether  Gourdon  did  not  surpass  Delille. 
From  that  time  forth  the  registrar  spoke  of  his  model  as 
Monsieur  I' Able  Delille  with  unnecessary  courtesy. 

Poems  achieved  between  the  years  1780  and  1814  were  all 
modeled  on  the  same  pattern;  and  the  great  poem  on  the  bil- 
lioquet,  or  cup-and-ball,  may  be  taken  as  a  representative 
specimen.  Boileau's  Lutrin  is  the  Saturn  of  a  whole  abortive 
progeny  of  playful  pieces,  most  of  them  limited  to  four  cantos, 
for  it  was  'generally  recognized  that  the  subject-matter  was 
apt  to  grow  thin  in  six. 

Gourdon's  poem  on  the  cup-and-ball — the  bilboqueide — 
obeyed  the  rules  of  poetical  composition  invariably  observed 
in  such  cases,  for  all  these  departmental  compositions  are 


254  THE  PEASANTRY 

made  from  the  same  pattern.  The  first  canto  describes  the 
subject  of  the  poem,  and  begins,  like  Gourdon's  effort,  with 
an  invocation  much  on  this  wise : — 

I  sing  the  Sport  which  suits  with  every  age 
The  Small  and  Great,  the  Simple  and  the  Sage; 
When  our  deft  Hand  the  boxwood  Spike  extends 
To  catch  the  transpierced  Globe  as  it  descends, 
Delightful  Pastime,  sovran  cure  for  Spleen, 
If  Palamedes  had  this  Toy  foreseen, 
How  had  he  longed  another  Wreath  to  claim, 
And  envied  us  the  invention  of  the  Game! 
Muse  of  the  Loves  of  Laughter  and  of  Glee 
Descend  upon  my  roof  and  visit  me, 
A  votary  of  Themis  striving  still 
Official  paper  with  my  Rhymes  to  fill, 
Descend  and  charm.    .    .    . 

Then  followed  a  description  of  the  game  itself,  and  of  the 
most  eloquent  bilboquets  known  to  history,  an  account  of  the 
part  they  played  in  the  prosperity  of  the  Green  Monkey  and 
other  toy-shops,  a  digression  touching  statistics  in  this  con- 
nection, and  finally  Gourdon  brought  his  first  canto  to  an 
end  with  three  lines  which  recall  the  conclusion  of  every  sim- 
ilar production : — 

Thus  do  the  Arts,  nay,  even  Science'  self, 
Taking  the  Object  into  their  employ, 
Turn  to  their  profit  Pleasure's  trifling  Toy. 

The  second  canto  (as  usual)  described  diverse  manners  of 
using  the  "object"  and  the  ways  in  which  it  might  serve  its 
owner  in  society  and  with  the  fair  sex.  It  will  suffice  to 
quote  a  single  passage  in  which  the  player  goes  through  his 
exercises  beneath  the  eyes  of  the  '^beloved  object,"  and  the 
rest  may  be  left  to  the  imaginations  of  amateurs  of  this 
serious  literature: — 


THE  PEASANTRY  255 

Watch  yonder  Player  'mid  the  gazers  all, 

His  eye  fixed  fondly  on  the  iv'ry  Ball, 

How  heedfully  he  spies  with  caution  nice 

Its  Movement  in  parabola  precise. 

Thrice  has  the  Globe  described  its  curve  complete, 

He  lays  his  Triumph  at  his  Idol's  feet, 

When  lo!— the  Disc  its  destiny  has  missed, 

And  hits  the  careless  Player  on  the  fist! 

He  lifts  his  martyred  digits  to  his  lips, 

A  flying  Kiss  consoles  his  Finger-tips. 

How  canst  thou,  Ingrate,  of  thy  luck  complain? 

A  smile  o'erpays  thee  for  the  trifling  pain! 

It  was  this  piece  of  description  (worthy  of  Virgil)  which 
raised  the  question  whether  Gourdon  had  not  surpassed 
Delille.  The  matter-of-fact  Bnmet  objected  to  the  word  disc, 
which  provided  society  with  matter  for  discussion  during  the 
best  part  of  a  twelvemonth.  But  one  evening  when  both  sides 
had  argued  themselves  red  in  the  face,  Dr.  Gourdon,  the  man 
of  science,  completely  crushed  the  antidisc-ites. 

"The  moon,"  said  he,  "stvled  a  'disc'  by  the  poets,  is  a 
globe." 

"How  do  you  know?"  retorted  Brunet.  "We  have  never 
seen  the  other  side  of  it." 

The  third  canto  contained  the  inevitable  anecdote,  a  story 
of  a  famous  minister  of  Louis  XVI.,  which  everybody  knows 
by  heart;  but,  to  quote  the  formula  hallowed  by  constant 
use  in  the  Debats  between  1810  and  1814,  "it  had  borrowed 
novel  graces  from  poesy  and  from  the  charm  which  the  author 
had  infused  into  his  verse." 

The  fourth  canto,  which  summed  up  the  work,  concluded 
with  the  following  audacious  lines  of  the  kind  written  for  pri- 
vate circulation  from  1810  to  1814;  lines  which  first  saw  the 
light  in  1824,  after  the  death  of  Napoleon : — 

Thus  have  I  dared  to  sing  'mid  War's  alarms, 
Ah!  would  that  Monarchs  bore  no  other  Arms, 


256  THE  PEASANTRY 

Ah!  would  that  Nations  in  their  Hours  of  ease 
Beguiled  the  time  with  Pleasures  such  as  these! 
To  Burgundy,  too  long,  alas!  forlorn, 
Saturn's  and  Rhea's  days  again  were  born. 


These  elegant  verses  were  incorporated  in  the  first  and  only 
edition,  the  editio  princeps,  which  issued  from  the  press  of 
Bournier,  the  printer  at  Ville-aux-Fayes. 

One  hundred  subscribers,  by  an  offering  of  three  francs 
apiece,  insured  immortality  to  the  poem,  and  established  a 
dangerous  precedent;  and  this  was  the  more  handsome  of 
them,  for  that  every  one  of  the  subscribers  had  heard  every 
line  of  the  verses  a  hundred  times. 

Mme.  Soudry  had  but  recently  suppressed  the  cup-and- 
ball  which  used  to  lie  on  a  console  table  in  her  drawing- 
room,  a  pretext  for  frequent  quotations;  she  found  out  at 
last  that  she  had  a  rival  in  the  toy. 

As  for  the  poet  himself,  who  bragged  of  his  works  in  manu- 
script, it  will  be  a  sufficient  description  of  him  to  record  the 
way  in  which  he  announced  to  the  "best  society"  of  Soulanges 
that  a  rival  poet  had  appeared. 

"Have  you  heard  the  strange  news?"  he  had  said  (two  years 
before  the  story  begins).  "There  is  another  poet  in  Bur- 
gundy.— Yes,"  he  went  on,  seeing  the  astonishment  expressed 
in  all  faces,  "he  comes  from  Macon.  But  you  would  never 
imagine  what  he  is  at  work  upon.  He  is  putting  the  clouds 
into  rhyme — 

"They  did  very  well,  left  blank,"  said  Guerbet  the  punster. 

"It  is  the  queerest  rigmarole!  Lakes  and  stars  and  bil- 
lows! Not  a  single  rational  image,  not  a  trace  of  didactic 
intention;  he  is  ignorant  of  the  very  sources  of  poetry.  He 
calls  the  sky  by  its  proper  name ;  he  calls  the  moon,  the  moon, 
plump  and  plain,  instead  of  calling  it  the  'orb  of  night !' 
See  what  lengths  you  may  go  by  straining  after  originality !" 
cried  Gourdon  dolorously.  "Poor  young  follow !  A  born 
Burgundian,  and  he  takes  to  singing  the  praise  of  water,  it 
makes  you  sorry  to  see  it !  If  he  had  but  come  and  consulted 


THE  PEASANTRY  257 

me,  I  would  have  given  him  the  finest  subject  in  the  world, 
a  poem  on  wine — The  Bacchiad — which  I  myself  feel  too  old 
to  undertake  now." 

The  great  poet*  is  still  ignorant  of  his  greatest  triumph 
(due,  it  is  true,  to  his  Burgundian  extraction).  He  was  once 
the  talk  of  Soulanges,  where  the  very  names  of  the  modern 
Pleiade  were  unknown. 

Scores  of  Gourdons  lived  and  sang  under  the  Empire,  which 
some  have  blamed,  forsooth,  for  the  neglect  of  letters !  Turn 
to  your  booksellers'  catalogues,  and  behold  poem  after  poem 
on  the  Turning-lathe,  the  Game  of  Draughts,  Backgammon... 
Geography,  Typography,  Comedy,  and  what  not,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  masterpieces  so  much  cried  up  as  Delille  on  Pity,  Im- 
agination, and  Conversation,  or  Berchoux  on  Gastronomy, 
Dansomanie,  and  the  like.  Very  probably  in  another  fifty 
years  readers  will  laugh  at  our  thousand  and  one  poems, 
modeled  on  the  Meditations  and  Orientates.  Who  can  foresee 
the  changes  of  taste,  the  caprices  of  fashion,  the  transforma- 
tions of  man's  mind  ?  Each  generation  sweeps  away  all  before 
it,  even  down  to  the  traces  of  the  idols  which  it  finds  upon  its 
way;  each  generation  sets  up  new  gods  to  be  worshiped  and 
thrown  down  in  turn  by  the  next. 

Sarcus,  a  nice,  little,  dapple-gray,  elderly  man,  divided 
his  time  between  Themis  and  Flora — which  is  to  say,  between 
the  Court  and  his  hothouse.  For  the  past  twelve  years  he 
had  been  meditating  a  book  to  be  entitled  "The  History  of  the 
Institution  of  Justices  of  the  Peace."  The  political  and  ju- 
dicial aspects  of  these  functionaries,  he  was  wont  to  observe, 
had  already  undergone  several  changes.  Justices  of  the  peace 
existed  in  virtue  of  the  Code  of  Brumaire  of  the  year  IV., 
but  an  office  so  important,  so  invaluable  to  the  country,  had 
lost  its  prestige,  because  the  emoluments  attached  to  an  ap- 
pointment which  ought  to  be  made  for  life  were  out  of  all 
proportion  to  the  dignity  of  the  office.  It  was  laid  to  Sar- 
cus' charge  that  he  was  a  Freethinker ;  and  he  was  considered 
to  be  the  politician  of  the  set,  which,  in  plain  language,  as 
you  will  guess,  means  that  he  was  the  most  tiresome  person 

*Lamartine. 


258  THE  PEASANTRY 

in  it.  He  was  said  "to  talk  like  a  book."  Gaubertin  promised 
him  the  Cross  of  the  Legion  of  Honor,  but  postponed  fulfil- 
ment until  the  day  when  he  (Gaubertin)  should  succeed 
Leclercq  and  take  his  seat  in  the  Centre  Left. 

Guerbet,  the  local  wit  and  receiver  of  taxes,  was  a  stout, 
heavy  man,  with  a  butter  face,  a  false  toupet,  and  gold  rings 
in  the  ears,  which  lived  in  a  state  of  continual  friction  with 
his  shirt  collar.  Guerbet  dabbled  in  pomology.  He  prided 
himself  on  the  possession  of  the  finest  fruit-trees  in  the  dis- 
trict; he  forced  early  vegetables,  which  appeared  about  a 
month  after  their  advent  in  Paris,  and  grew  the  most  trop- 
ical products  in  his  hotbeds;  pineapples,  to  wit,  and  nec- 
tarines, and  green  peas;  and  when  a  pottle  of  strawberries 
was  sold  at  ten  sous  in  Paris,  he  would  bring  Mme.  Soudry 
a  handful  with  no  little  pride. 

In  M.  Vermut  the  druggist  Soulanges  possessed  a  chemist 
who  had  a  little  more  right  to  his  title  than  Sarcus  the  states- 
man, or  Lupin  the  singer,  or  Gourdon  senior,  the  man  of 
science,  or  his  brother  the  poet.  Yet  the  best  society  of  Sou- 
langes held  Vermut  rather  cheap,  and  beyond  that  society 
he  was  not  known  at  all.  Perhaps  the  circle  felt  instinctively 
the  real  superiority  of  the  thinker  among  them  who  never  said 
a  word,  and  listened  to  nonsense  with  a  satirical  smile;  so 
they  threw  doubts  on  his  learning,  and  questioned  it  sotto 
voce.  Outside  the  circle  no  one  troubled  their  heads  about  it. 

Vermut  was  the  butt  of  Mme.  Soudry's  salon.  No  society 
is  complete  without  a  victim;  there  must  be  somebody  to 
compassionate,  and  bantej,  and  patronize,  and  scorn.  In  the 
first  place,  Vermut,  with  his  head  full  of  scientific  problems, 
used  to  come  to  the  house  with  his  cravat  untied  and  his  waist- 
coat unfastened,  and  wore  a  green  jacket,  usually  stained. 
Furthermore,  he  was  a  fair  mark  for  jokes  on  account  of  a 
countenance  so  babyish  that  old  Guerbet  used  to  say  that  he 
had  taken  it  from  his  patients.  In  places  behind  the  times 
like  Soulanges,  country  apothecaries  are  still  employed  as 
they  used  to  be  in  the  days  when  Poureenngnac  fell  a  victim 
to  a  practical  joke,  and  these  respectable  practitioners,  the 


THE  PEASANTRY  259 

better  to  establish  their  calling,  demand  an  indemnity  of  dis- 
placement. 

The  little  man,  endowed  with  the  patience  of  a  chemist, 
could  not  "enjoy"  his  wife,  to  use  the  provincialism  which 
signifies  the  abolition  of  the  marital  rule.  Mme.  Vermut, 
a  charming  lively  woman,  a  woman  of  spirit  moreover,  who 
could  lose  two  whole  francs  at  cards  without  a  word,  railed 
at  her  spoiise,  pursued  him  with  epigrams,  and  held  him  up 
for  an  idiot  only  fit  to  distil  dulness.  She  was  one  of  those 
women  whose  mission  it  is  to  keep  a  little  town  lively;  she 
was  the  salt  of  this  corner  of  the  earth,  kitchen  salt,  it  is 
true,  but  what  salt  it  was !  She  indulged  in  boisterous  jokes, 
but  these  were  overlooked.  She  thought  nothing  of  telling 
M.  Taupin,  a  white-haired  man  of  seventy,  to  "shut  up, 
monkey !" 

The  miller  of  Soulanges  had  fifty  thousand  francs  a  year 
and  an  only  daughter,  whom  Lupin  had  in  his  mind  for 
Amaury,  for  he  had  given  up  all  hope  by  this  time  of  Mile. 
Gaubertin,  and  President  Gaubertin  thought  of  the  same  girl 
for  his  own  son,  the  registrar  of  mortgages.  Here  again  in- 
terests clashed.  The  miller,  a  Sarcus-Taupin,  was  the  IsTu- 
cingen  of  the  town.  He  was  said  to  have  three  million  francs, 
but  he  would  not  join  any  combination.  He  thought  of  noth- 
ing but  his  flour-mill,  and  of  how  to  get  all  the  trade  into 
his  own  hands,  and  was  chiefly  remarkable  for  the  signal 
absence  of  courtesy  or  civility  in  his  manner. 

Old  Guerbet,  the  brother  of  the  postmaster  at  Conches, 
had  about  ten  thousand  francs  a  year  of  his  own  besides  his 
professional  income.  The  Gourdons  were  well-to-do  men. 
The  doctor  had  married  the  only  daughter  of  the  very  old  M. 
Gendrin-Vattebled,  Crown  Agent  of  Woods  and  Forests,  who 
could  not  be  expected  to  last  much  longer ;  while  the  registrar 
had  wedded  the  Abbe  Taupin's  niece  and  sole  heiress.  The 
Abbe  Taupin,  cure"  of  Soulanges,  was  a  fat  priest,  ensconced 
in  his  living  like  a  rat  in  a  cheese. 

The  pliant  ecclesiastic  was  very  popular  in  Soulanges;  he 
was  quite  at  home  in  the  best  society,  kindly  and  good-natured 


260  THE  PEASANTRY 

with  the  "second-rate,"  and  apostolic  with  the  unfortunate. 
Cousin  to  the  miller,  and  related  to  both  the  Sarcus  families, 
he  belonged  to  the  district,  and  was  part  of  the  system  of 
Mediocracy.  Taupin  was  thrifty,  never  dined  at  home,  went 
to  weddings  and  came  away  before  the  dancing  began,  and 
never  meddled  with  politics;  he  demanded  and  obtained  out- 
ward conformity  to  the  requirements  of  religion,  urging  his 
pleas  "in  my  professional  capacity."  And  he  was  allowed  to 
have  his  way.  "We  have  a  good  cure,"  people  used 
to  say  of  him.  The  Bishop,  who  knew  Soulanges  well, 
was  not  deceived  as  to  the  merit  of  the  ecclesiastic;  but  it 
was  something  to  find  a  man  who  could  induce  such  a  town 
to  accept  the  forms  of  religion,  a  man  who  could  fill  the 
church  of  a  Sunday  and  preach  a  sermon  to  a  slumbering  con- 
gregation. 

The  Gourdons'  ladies — for  at  Soulanges,  as  in  Dresden  and 
some  other  German  capitals,  those  who  move  in  the  best  so- 
ciety greet  each  other  with  the  inquiry,  "How  is  yoiir  lady?:' 
and  people  say,  "He  was  not  there  with  his  lady,"  or  "I  saw  his 
lady  and  the  young  ladies."  A  Parisian  who  should  say  "his 
wife"  or  "womenkind"  would  create  a  sensation,  and  be  set 
down  for  a  man  of  the  worst  style.  At  Soulanges,  as  at  Ge- 
neva, Dresden,  and  Brussels,  these  words  are  never  used ;  Brus- 
sels shopkeepers  may  put  "wife  of  such  an  one"  above  their 
shop  doors,  but  at  Soulanges  "your  good  lady,"  is  the  only 
permissible  formula.  To  resume — the  Gourdons'  ladies  can 
only  be  compared  to  the  luckless  supernumeraries  of  second- 
rate  theatres  known  to  Parisian  audiences,  who  frequently 
take  the  artistes  for  a  laughing-stock ;  it  will  suffice  to  say  that 
they  belonged  to  the  order  of  "nice  little  things,"  and  their 
portraits  will  be  complete,  for  the  most  unlettered  bourgeois 
can  look  about  him  and  find  examples  of  these  necessary  be- 
ings. 

It  is  scarcely  worth  while  to  remark  that  Guerbet  under- 
stood finance  admirably  well,  and  that  Soudry  would  have 
made  a  minister  of  war,  for  every  worthy  townsman  was 
equipped  with  the  imaginary  specialty  necessary  to  the  exist- 


THE  PEASANTRY  261 

ence  of  a  provincial;  and  not  only  so,  each  one  was  free  to 
cultivate  his  own  private  plot  in  the  domain  of  human  vanity 
without  fear  of  rivalry  or  disturbance  from  his  neighbor. 

If  Cuvier,  traveling  incognito,  had  passed  through  the 
town,  the  best  society  of  Soulanges  would  have  felt  convinced 
that  his  knowledge  was  a  mere  trifle  compared  with  Dr.  Gour- 
don's  scientific  attainments.  Nourrit  and  his  "fine  thread  of 
voice,"  as  the  notary  called  it  with  patronizing  indulgence, 
would  have  been  thought  scarce  worthy  to  accompany  the 
nightingale  of  Soulanges ;  and  as  for  the  versifier  whose  works 
were  just  passing  through  Bournier's  press,  it  was  incredible 
that  a  poet  of  equal  merit  should  be  found  in  Paris  now  that 
Delille  was  dead. 

This  provincial  bourgeoisie,  in  its  sleek  self-satisfaction, 
could  take  precedence  of  all  social  superiority.  Only  those 
who  have  spent  some  portion  of  their  lives  in  a  small  country 
town  of  this  kind  can  form  any  idea  of  the  exceeding  com- 
placency which  overspread  the  countenances  of  these  folk  who 
took  themselves  for  the  coelic  plexus  of  France.  Gifted  as 
they  were  with  incredible  perverse  ingenuity,  they  had  decided 
in  their  wisdom  that  one  of  the  heroes  of  Essling  was-  a 
coward,  Mme.  de  Montcornet  a  woman  of  scandalous  life,  and 
the  Abbe  Brossette  a  petty  intriguer,  and  within  a  fortnight 
of  the  purchase  of  the  Aigues  they  discovered  the  General's 
origin,  and  dubbed  him  the  "Upholsterer." 

If  Eigou,  Soudry,  and  Gaubertin  had  all  of  them  lived  at 
Ville-aux-Fayes,  there  would  have  been  a  quarrel ;  their  pre- 
tensions must  inevitably  have  come  into  collision ;  but  Fate  or- 
dained that  the  Lucullus  of  Blangy  should  feel  that  solitude 
was  a  necessity  if  he  was  to  combine  usury  and  sensuality  in 
peace;  while  Mme.  Soudry  had  sense  enough  to  see  that  she 
could  only  reign  in  such  a  place  as  Soulanges,  and  Gaubertin 
found  Ville-aux-Fayes  a  central  position  for  his  business. 
Those  who  find  amusement  in  the  study  of  social  intricacies 
will  admit  that  Montcornet  had  a  run  of  ill  luck  when  he  fell 
among  such  foes,  all  living  sufficiently  far  apart  to  revolve  in 
their  separate  spheres  of  power  and  vanity.  The  malignant 


262  THE  PEASANTRY 

planets  were  but  ten  times  the  more  potent  for  mischief  be- 
cause they  never  crossed  each  other's  paths. 

Yet,  though  the  worth}'  Soulangeois  were  proud  of  their 
leisured  lives,  and  regarded  their  society  as  distinctly  more 
agreeable  than  that  of  Ville-aux-Fayes,  repeating  with  ludi- 
crous pomposity  that  "Soulanges  is  the  place  for  pleasure  and 
society"  (a  saying  current  in  the  valley),  it  would  scarcely  be 
prudent  to  suppose  that  Ville-aux-Fayes  admitted  this  su- 
premacy. The  Gaubertin  salon  laughed  in  petto  at  the 
Soudry  salon.  Gaubertin  would  say,  "Ours  is  a  busy  town, 
a  great  business  place,  and  some  of  us  are  fools  enough  to 
plague  ourselves  with  money-making,"  and  from  his  manner 
it  was  easy  to  discern  a  slight  antagonism  between  the  earth 
and  the  moon.  The  moon  believed  that  she  was  useful  to  the 
earth,  and  the  earth  controlled  the  moon. 

Both  earth  and  moon  lived,  however,  on  terms  of  the 
closest  intimacy.  At  Carnival-tide  the  best  society  of  Sou- 
langes went  in  a  body  to  the  four  dances  given  in  turn  by 
Gaubertin,  Gendrin,  Leclercq,  and  Soudry  junior,  the  public 
prosecutor.  Every  Sunday  the  public  prosecutor  and  his  wife, 
with  M.,  Mme.,  and  Mile,  filise  Gaubertin,  came  over  to 
Soulanges  to  dine  with  the  Soudrys.  When  the  sub-prefect 
was  invited,  and  the  postmaster,  Guerbet  from  Conches,  came 
to  take  potluck,  Soulanges  beheld  the  spectacle  of  four  official 
carriages  stopping  the  way  before  the  Soudry  mansion. 


II 

THE  QUEEN'S  DRAWING-ROOM 

"Riaou  timed  his  arrival  for  half-past  five,  knowing  that  he 
should  find  every  one  at  his  post  at  that  hour.  The  mayor, 
like  everybody  else  in  the  town,  dined  at  three  o'clock, 
following  the  eighteenth  century  usage ;  so  from  five  till  nine 
in  the  evening  the  Soulanges  notables  exchanged  news,  de- 


THE  PEASANTRY  263 

livered  political  speeches,  commented  on  all  the  gossip  of  the 
valley,  and  discussed  the  doings  of  the  folk  at  the  Aigues. 
This  last  topic  found  them  in  conversation  for  an  hour  daily. 
Every  one  made  a  point  of  learning  something  on  that  head, 
and  it  was  well  known  besides  that  to  bring  news  of  the 
Aigues  was  a  way  of  recommending  yourself  to  your  host  and 
hostess. 

After  this  indispensable  review  of  things  in  general,  the 
company  betook  themselves  to  boston,  the  only  game  which 
the  queen  could  play.  The  stout  old  Guerbet  would  mimic 
Madame  Isaure  (Gaubertin's  wife),  ridiculing  her  finical 
airs,  her  thin  voice,  prim  mouth,  and  missish  manners;  the 
Cure  Taupin  would  retail  some  bit  of  news  from  Ville-a,ux- 
Fayes;  Mme.  Soudry  was  saturated  with  fulsome  compli- 
ments; and  then  came  the  final,  "We  have  had  a  delightful 
game  of  boston." 

Kigou  was  too  selfish  to  take  the  trouble  to  come  a  dis- 
tance of  twelve  kilometres  to  hear  the  trash  talked  in  Mme. 
Soudry's  drawing-room,  and  to  see  a  monkey  masquerading 
as  an  elderly  woman.  He  was  greatly  the  superior  of  the 
company  by  ability  and  education,  and  never  showed  himself 
in  Soulanges  save  on  the  rare  occasions  when  he  went  thither 
to  consult  his  notary,  Lupin.  Rigou  was  not  expected  to  be 
neighborly ;  his  habits  and  business  occupations  absolved  him ; 
and  his  health  (he  said)  did  not  permit  him  to  return  at 
night  along  the  road  by  the  river,  when  "the  damp  was  ris- 
ing" from  the  Thune. 

The  tall,  gaunt  usurer,  moreover,  overawed  Mme.  Soudry's 
drawing-room.  Instinctively  it  was  felt  that  in  this  man 
there  was  a  tiger  with  claws  of  steel ;  that  the  malignance  of 
a  savage  was  combined  with  the  wisdom  implanted  in  the 
cloister  and  matured  by  the  sun  of  gold,  wisdom  in  which 
Gaubertin  had  never  willingly  trusted. 

Urbain,  Soudry's  man,  sitting  on  a  bench  under  the  dining- 
room  windows,  looked  up  and  saw  the  little  basket-chaise  as 
it  passed  the  Cafe  de  la  Paix.  He  shaded  his  eyes  to  watch 
it,  while  he  chatted  with  Socquard  the  saloon-keeper. 


264  THE  PEASANTRY 

"That  is  old  Rigou  .'  The  gate  will  have  to  be  opened.  You 
hold  his  horse,  Socquard,"  he  said  familiarly.  Urbain  had 
been  in  a  cavalry  regiment,  and  when  he  failed  to  obtain  a 
transfer  into  the  gendarmerie  he  took  service  with  Soudry 
instead.  He  now  went  in  to  open  the  great  gate  into  the 
courtyard. 

The  great  Socquard,  as  you  see,  was  paying  an  informal 
call;  but  so  it  is  with  many  illustrious  personages,  they  con- 
descend to  walk,  and  sneeze,  and  eat,  and  sleep  for  all  the 
world  like  ordinary  mortals. 

Socquard  was  by  birth  a  Hercules.  He  could  carry  eleven 
hundredweight,  he  could  break  a  man's  back  with  one  blow 
of  his  fist,  twist  an  iron  bar,  or  stop  a  cart  with  a  horse  har- 
nessed to  it.  He  was  the  Milo  of  Crotona  of  the  valley,  his 
fame  spread  all  over  the  department,  and  absurd  fables  were 
told  of  him,  as  of  most  celebrities.  It  was  said,  for  instance, 
in  the  Morvan  that  one  day  he  picked  up  a  poor  woman, 
donkey,  and  bundles,  and  all,  and  carried  her  to  market,  that 
he  had  eaten  an  ox  at  a  sitting,  and  drunk  a  quarter  cask  of 
wine  in  a  day,  and  the  like.  Socquard.  a  short,  thickset  man 
with  a  placid  countenance,  was  as  meek  as  any  maid,  he  was 
broad  in  the  shoulders,  and  deep-chested;  and  though  his 
lungs  heaved  like  the  bellows  in  a  smithy,  his  voice  was  so 
thin  and  clear  that  it  startled  any  one  who  heard  it  for  the 
first  time. 

Like  Tonsard,  whose  reputation  for  ferocity  saved  him  the 
trouble  of  giving  proof  of  it,  like  every  man  who  is  hedged 
about  by  a  reputation  of  any  kind,  Socquard  never  displayed 
his  triumphant  powers,  except  at  the  particular  request  and 
prayer  of  his  friends.  Just  now  he  held  the  horse's  head  while 
the  public  prosecutor's  father-in-law  dismounted  and  turned 
to  apply  himself  to  the  flight  of  steps. 

"All  well  at  home,  M.  Rigou?"  inquired  the  illustrious 
Socquard. 

"Pretty  well,  old  chap,"  returned  Rigou.  "And  are  M. 
Plissoud  and  Bonnebault,  Viollet,  and  Amaury  still  the  props 
of  your  establishment  ?" 


THE  PEASANTRY  265 

This  inquiry,  apparently  prompted  by  a  good-natured  in- 
terest, was  no  random  question  flung  down  by  a  superior  to 
an  inferior.  When  Eigou  had  nothing  else  to  do,  he  thought 
over  every  trifle,  and  Fourchon  had  already  pointed  out  that 
there  was  something  suspicious  in  an  intimacy  between 
Bonnebault,  Plissoud,  and  Corporal  Viollet. 

For  a  few  francs  lost  at  play,  Bonnebault  was  quite  capable 
of  selling  the  peasant's  secrets  to  the  corporal ;  or  two  or  three 
extra  bowls  of  punch  might  set  him  babbling  when  he  did  not 
know  the  importance  of  his  maudlin  utterances.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  old  otter-hunter's  information  might  have 
been  counseled  by  thirst,  and  Kigou  would  have  paid  no  at- 
tention to  it  save  for  the  mention  of  Plissoud.  Plissoud  was 
in  a  position  which  might  inspire  him  with  a  notion  of  thwart- 
ing the  Aigues  conspiracy,  if  it  were  merely  to  make  some- 
thing for  himself  out  of  either  side, 

Plissoud,  the  clerk  of  the  court,  eked  out  his  income  with 
various  unremunerative  occupations;  he  was  a  life  insurance 
agent  (these  companies  having  just  been  started  in  France), 
agent  likewise  for  a  society  which  insured  against  the  chances 
of  conscription ;  but  an  unfortunate  predilection  for  billiards 
and  spiced  wine  was  the  principal  obstacle  in  his  way  to  for- 
tune. Like  Fourchon,  he  cultivated  the  art  of  doing  nothing, 
and  waited  for  a  problematical  fortune  to  turn  up.  Plissoud 
hated  the  "best  society"  of  Soulanges  profoundly,  having 
measured  its  power,  and  Plissoud  knew  all  the  ins  and  outs 
of  Gaubertin's  bourgeois  tyranny.  He  scoffed  at  the  moneyed 
men  of  Soulanges  and  Ville-aux-Fayes,  and  represented  the 
Opposition  in  a  minority  of  one.  As  he  had  neither  cash  nor 
credit,  he  scarcely  seemed  to  be  formidable;  and  Brunet,,only 
too  glad  to  have  so  contemptible  a  rival,  protected  Plissoud 
for  fear  that  he  should  sell  his  practice  to  some  energetic 
young  fellow  like  Bonnac,  for  instance,  who  would  compel 
him  to  yield  up  an  equal  share  of  the  business  of  the  district. 

"Business  is  all  right,  thanks  to  them,"  answered  Socquard, 
"but  my  spiced  wine  is  being  imitated." 


266  THE  PEASANTRY 

"You  ought  to  follow  the  matter  up,"  said  Eigou  sen- 
tentiously. 

"I  might  be  led  on  too  far,"  said  the  saloon-keeper,  inno- 
cent of  any  jocular  intention. 

"And  do  your  customers  get  on  well  together  ?" 

"There  is  a  row  now  and  again;  but  that  is  only  natural 
when  they  play  for  money." 

All  heads  by  this  time  were  looking  out  of  the  drawing- 
room  window;  Soudry,  seeing  the  father  of  his  daughter-in- 
law,  came  out  upon  the  steps  to  greet  him. 

"Well,  compere,"  cried  the  ex-sergeant,  using  the  word  in 
its  old  sense,  "is  Annette  ill  that  you  vouchsafe  your  presence 
here  of  an  evening?" 

A  survival  of  the  gendarme  in  the  mayor  prompted  him  to 
go  straight  to  the  point. 

"No,"  said  Rigou,  touching  the  palm  which  Soudry  held 
out  with  his  own  right  forefinger;  "there  is  a  row  on,  we 
will  have  a  talk  about  it,  for  our  children  are  con- 
cerned  " 

Soudry,  a  fine-looking  man,  wore  a  blue  suit  as  though  he 
still  belonged  to  the  force,  and  a  black  stock  and  spurs  to  his 
boots.  He  took  Rigou's  arm  and  led  him  up  to  his  imposing 
better-half. 

The  glass  door  opened  on  to  the  terrace,  where  the  family 
party  were  walking  up  and  down  enjoying  the  summer 
evening.  The  imaginative  reader  who  has  read  the  previous 
sketch  can  picture  the  glory  of  the  wonderful  stretch  of  coun- 
try below. 

"It  is  a  very  long  time  since  we  last  saw  you,  my  dear 
Rigou,"  said  Mme.  Soudry,  taking  Rigou's  arm  to  walk  out 
upon  the  terrace. 

"I  am  so  troubled  with  indigestion,"  said  the  old  money- 
lender. "Just  look  at  me,  my  color  is  almost  as  high  as 
yours." 

Rigou's  appearance  on  the  terrace  was,  as  might  be  ex- 
pected, the  signal  for  a  salvo  of  jovial  greetings. 

"Epicu-rigou !     .     .     .     I've    found    another    name    for 


THE  PEASANTRY  267 

you !"  cried  the  receiver  of  taxes,  holding  out  a  hand,  in 
which  Eigou  inserted  a  forefinger. 

"Not  bad !  not  bad !"  said  Sarcus,  the  little  justice  of  the 
peace ;  "he  is  a  bit  of  a  glutton  is  our  lord  of  Blangy." 

"Lord  of  Blangy!"  said  Eigou  bitterly;  "I  have  not  been 
the  cock  of  my  village  this  long  while." 

"That  is  not  what  the  hens  say,  you  rogue  you !"  said  La 
Soudry,  giving  Eigou  a  playful  little  tap  with  her  fan. 

"Are  we  going  on  well,  my  dear  sir?"  asked  the  notary, 
bowing  to  his  principal  client. 

"Pretty  well,"  said  Eigou,  and  again  he  held  out  a  fore- 
finger for  the  lawyer  to  take. 

This  habit  of  Eigou's,  which  reduced  a  handshake  to  the 
chilliest  of  demonstrations,  was  enough  in  itself  to  depict  the 
man's  whole  character  to  a  stranger. 

"Look  for  a  corner  where  we  can  have  a  quiet  talk,"  said 
the  monk,  singling  out  Lupin  and  Mme.  Soudry  by  a  glance. 

"Let  us  go  back  to  the  drawing-room,"  said  the  queen  of 
Soulanges.  "These  gentlemen,"  she  added,  indicating  Dr. 
Gourdon  and  Guerbet,  "are  having  a  discussion  on  the  Q.  T." 

Mme.  Soudry  had  asked  them  what  they  were  talking  about, 
and  old  Guerbet,  witty  as  ever,  had  replied  that  they  were 
"having  a  discussion  on  the  Q.  T."  Mme.  Soudry  took  this 
for  some  scientific  expression,  and  repeated  the  word  with  a 
pretentious  air. 

"What  is  the  latest  news  of  the  Upholsterer  ?"  asked 
Soudry,  and  sitting  down  beside  his  wife,  he  put  his  arm 
about  her  waist.  Like  most  elderly  women,  La  Soudry  would 
forgive  much  for  a  public  demonstration  of  affection. 

"Why,  he  has  gone  to  the  prefecture  to  demand  the  enforce- 
ment of  the  penalties,  and  to  ask  for  support,"  said  Eigou, 
lowering  his  voice  to  set  an  example  of  prudence. 

"It  will  be  the  ruin  of  him,"  said  Lupin,  rubbing  his  hands. 
"There  will  be  fighting  !" 

"Fighting!"  repeated  Soudry,  "that  is  as  may  be.  If  the 
prefect  and  the  general,  who  are  friends  of  his,  send  over  a 
squadron  of  horse,  there  will  be  no  fighting.  With  the  gen- 

VOL,  10—43 


268  THE  PEASANTRY 

darmes  from  Soulanges  they  might,  at  a  pinch,  get  the  best 
of  it;  but  as  for  trying  to  stand  against  a  charge  of  cav- 
alry!  " 

"Sibilet  heard  him  say  something  still  more  dangerous,  and 
that  brings  me  here,"  Eigou  continued. 

"Oh !  my  poor  Sophie !"  cried  Mme.  Soudry,  taking  a  sen- 
timental tone,  "into  what  hands  the  Aigues  has  fallen !  This 
is  what  the  Eevolution  has  done  for  us;  it  has  given  silk 
epaulettes  to  low  ruffians !  Any  one  might  have  known  that 
if  you  turn  a  bottle  upside  down  the  dregs  will  come  to  the 
top  and  spoil  the  wine." 

"He  means  to  go  to  Paris  and  bring  influence  to  bear  on 
the  Keeper  of  the  Seals,  so  as  to  make  sweeping  changes  in 
the  Court  here." 

"Ah !"  said  Lupin,  "then  he  has  seen  his  danger." 

"If  they  give  my  son-in-law  the  appointment  of  avocat 
general,  there  is  nothing  to  be  said,  and  the  Upholsterer  will 
replace  him  by  some  Parisian  of  his  own,"  Rigou  continued. 
"If  he  asks  for  a  seat  in  the  Court  for  M.  Gendrin,  and  has 
our  examining  magistrate  Guerbet  appointed  to  be  president 
at  Auxerre,  he  will  knock  down  our  ninepins ! — He  has  the 
gendarmerie  for  him  as  it  is ;  if  he  has  the  Court  to  boot,  and 
has  counselors  like  the  Abbe  Brossette  and  Michaud  at  his 
side,  we  shall  be  nowhere ;  he  might  make  things  very  unpleas- 
ant for  us." 

"What !  in  these  five  years  have  you  not  managed  to  rid 
yourselves  of  the  Abbe  Brossette?"  asked  Lupin. 

"You  do  not  know  him,"  returned  Eigou;  "he  is  as  sus- 
picious as  a  blackbird.  That  priest  is  not  a  man,  he  never 
looks  at  a  woman ;  I  cannot  see  that  he  has  any  passion,  he  is 
impregnable.  Now  the  General's  hot  temper  lays  him  open  to 
attack.  A  man  with  a  weakness  is  always  the  servant  of  his 
enemies  when  they  can  use  the  handle  he  gives  them.  The 
really  strong  are  those  who  can  keep  their  vices  well  in 
hand,  and  do  not  suffer  themselves  to  be  mastered  by  them. 
The  peasants  are  all  right,  everything  is  in  working  order, 
but  so  far  we  can  do  nothing  against  the  Abbe.  He  is  like 


THE  PEASANTRY  269 

Michaud.  Such  men  are  too  good  to  live,  the  Almighty 
ought  to  take  them  to  Himself— 

"We  ought  to  find  them  servant  girls  who  would  put  plenty 
of  soap  on  their  stairs/'  said  Mme.  Soudry.  Rigou  gave  the 
almost  imperceptible  start  which  a  very  crafty  man  makes 
when  he  learns  a  new  stratagem. 

"The  Upholsterer  has  another  weak  side ;  he  loves  his  wife. 
We  might  reach  him  in  that  way ' 

"Let  us  see/'  said  Mme.  Soudry.  "We  must  see  first  if  he 
carries  out  his  notions." 

"What  ?"  cried  Lupin ;  "why,  there  is  the  rub  !'* 

"Lupin/'  said  Rigou,  taking  an  authoritative  tone,  "just 
go  to  the  prefecture  and  see  the  fair  Mme.  Sarcus  this  very 
evening.  Arrange  matters  with  her  so  that  her  husband  shall 
tell  her  all  that  the  Upholsterer  said  and  did  at  the  pre- 
fecture." 

"I  should  have  to  spend  the  night  there,"  returned  Lupin. 

"So  much  the  better  for  Money-Sarcus,  he  will  be  the 
gainer,"  remarked  Rigou,  "and  Mme.  Sarcus  is  not  exactly 
'out-of-date'  yet." 

"Oh !  M.  Rigou,"  simpered  Mrne.  Soudry,  "is  a  woman  ever 
'out-of-date?'" 

"You  are  right  as  far  as  that  one  is  concerned.  She  does 
not  paint  before  the  glass,"  said  Rigou.  The  exhibition 
of  Mme.  Soudry's  antiquated  charms  always  filled  him  with 
disgust. 

Mme.  Soudry,  who  firmly  believed  that  she  only  wore  a 
mere  "suspicion"  of  rouge,  did  not  feel  the  sting  of  the  epi- 
gram, and  asked,  "Is  it  really  possible  that  there  are  women 
who  paint  themselves  ?" 

"As  for  you,  Lupin/'  Rigou  continued,  without  taking  any 
notice  of  this  artless  speech,  "go  to  see  friend  Gaubertin  to- 
morrow morning  when  you  come  back.  Tell  him  that  I  and 
my  crony  here"  (slapping  Soudry  on  the  thigh)  "shall  come 
and  eat  a  crust  with  him,  and  ask  him  for  breakfast  about 
noon.  Let  him  know  how  things  are  going,  so  that  each  of 
us  may  turn  his  ideas  over  in  his  mind,  for  it  is  a  question 


270  THE  PEASANTRY 

now  of  making  an  end  of  that  accursed  Upholsterer.  As  I 
was  coming  here  to  find  you,  I  said  to  myself  that  we  must 
get  the  Upholsterer  into  some  mess  or  other,  so  that  the 
Keeper  of  the  Seals  may  laugh  in  his  face  when  he  asks  for 
any  changes  in  the  Court  at  Ville-aux-Fayes " 

"Hurrah  for  the  Church!"  cried  Lupin,  slapping  Eigou 
on  the  shoulder. 

An  idea  struck  Mme.  Soudry  at  that  very  moment,  an 
idea  which  could  only  have  occurred  to  an  opera  girl's  wait- 
ing-maid. 

"If  we  could  only  attract  the  Upholsterer  over  to  the  Sou- 
langes  fair,"  said  she,  "and  let  loose  some  bewitchingly  pretty 
girl  upon  him,  he  might  perhaps  take  up  with  her,  and  we 
could  make  trouble  between  him  and  his  wife;  she  could  be 
told  that  the  cabinetmaker's  son  had  gone  back  to  his  old 
loves " 

"Ah!  my  beauty,"  exclaimed  Soudry,  "there  is  more  sense 
in  your  head  than  in  the  whole  prefecture  of  police  at  Paris !" 

"  'Tis  an  idea  which  proves  that  Mme.  Soudry  is  as  much 
our  queen  by  intelligence  as  by  beauty,"  said  Lupin,  and  was 
rewarded  by  a  grimace  which  was  accepted  without  protest 
as  a  smile  by  the  best  society  of  Soulanges. 

"It  would  be  better  yet,"  said  Eigou,  who  had  remained 
thoughtful  for  some  time,  "if  the  thing  might  be  turned  to  a 
scandal." 

"To  have  him  brought  before  a  magistrate  on  a  criminal 
charge  !"  cried  Lupin.  "Oh,  that  would  be  fine !" 

"How  delightful !"  said  Soudry  artlessly,  "to  see,  for  in- 
stance, the  Comte  de  Montcornet,  Grand  Cross  of  the  Legion 
of  Honor,  Commander  of  the-.  Order  of  St.  Louis,  and  Lieu- 
tenant-General,  in  the  Police  Court  on  a  charge  of  inde- 
cent  " 

"He  is  too  fond  of  his  wife,"  pronounced  Lupin  judi- 
ciously; "he  would  never  be  made  to  go  that  length." 

"That  is  no  hindrance,"  suid  Eigou,  "but  there  is  no  girl 
in  the  district  that  I  see  who  is  fit  to  turn  a  saint  into  a  sin- 
ner. I  am  looking  out  for  one  for  my  Abbe." 


THE  PEASANTRY  2rJ 

"What  do  you  say  to  the  beautiful  Gatienne  Giboulard  of 
Auxerre?  Sarcus'  son  has  lost  his  head  over  her,"  suggested 
Lupin. 

"She  would  be  the  very  one,"  said  Eigou,  "only  she  is  of 
no  use  for  our  purpose ;  she  imagines  that  she  has  only  to  show 
herself  to  be  admired;  she  is  not  wily  enough.  We  want  a 
minx  with  a  head  on  her  shoulders.  .  .  .  It  is  all  one, 
she  shall  come." 

"Yes,"  said  Lupin,  "the  more  pretty  girls  he  sees, .  the 
greater  the  chances." 

"It  will  be  a  very  difficult  matter  to  bring  the  Upholsterer 
over  to  the  fair.  And  suppose  that  he  comes,  would  he  go  to 
a  dancing  saloon  like  the  Tivoli  ?"  queried  the  ex-sergeant. 

"The  reason  for  not  going  does  not  hold  good  this  year, 
dearie,"  said  Mme.  Soudry. 

"What  reason,  my  beauty  ?"  inquired  her  spouse. 

"The  Upholsterer  wanted  to  marry  Mile,  de  Soulanges," 
said  Lupin;  "he  was  told  that  she  was  too  young,  and  he 
took  offence.  That  is  the  reason  of  the  coolness  between  M. 
de  Soulanges  and  M.  de  Montcornet,  two -old  friends  who 
both  served  in  the  Imperial  Guard.  They  never  see  each 
other  now.  The  Upholsterer  did  not  feel  inclined  to  meet 
them  at  the  fair  after  that ;  but  they  are  away  from  home  this 
year." 

As  a  rule,  the  Soulanges  family  spent  July,  August,  Sep- 
tember, and  October  at  their  country  house;  but  at  this  par- 
ticular time  the  General  was  in  command  of  the  artillery  in 
Spain,  under  the  Due  d'Angouleme,  and  the  Countess  had 
accompanied  her  husband.  At  the  siege  of  Cadiz  the  Count 
won,  as  all  the  world  knows,  the  marshal's  baton  which  was 
given  him  in  1826. 

So  Montcornet's  enemies  might  well  believe  that  the  Aigues 
would  not  always  stand  aloof  at  the  Feast  of  Our  Lady  in  Au- 
gust, and  that  it  would  be  easy  to  induce  the  Count  to  come 
to  the  Tivoli. 

"That  is  so  !"  added  Lupin.— "Very  well,  Daddy,"  he  went 


272  THE  PEASANTRY 

on,  turning  to  Eigou ;  "it  rests  with  you  to  manoeuvre  matters 
so  that  he  comes  to  the  fair,  and  we  will  bamboozle  him 
nicely." 

The  Soulanges  fair  on  the  loth  of  August  is  one  of  the 
special  attractions  of  the  town.  It  is  the  most  important 
fair  for  thirty  leagues  round,  eclipsing  even  those  held  at  the 
chief  town  of  the  department.  Yille-aux-Fayes  has  no  fair, 
for  the  day  of  its  patron,  Saint  Sylvester,  falls  at  the  end  of 
December. 

In  August  Soulanges  is  full  of  hawkers,  and  from  the  12th 
to  the  15th  of  August  two  parallel  lines  of  stalls,  wooden 
framework  booths  covered  with  canvas,  enliven  the  usually 
empty  market-place.  The  fair  and  festival,  which  lasts  a 
fortnight,  is  as  good  as  a  harvest  for  the  little  place.  It  has 
the  authority  and  prestige  of  a  tradition.  Peasants  leave 
the  communes,  where  they  are  nailed  down  by  their  toil,  as 
old  Fourchon  put  it,  to  go  to  the  fair  at  Soulanges.  The 
tempting  display  of  wares  and  gauds  heaped  up  in  the 
booths  on  a  fair  green  exercises  a  periodically  renewed  fas- 
cination over  the  -minds  of  women  and  children  and  peasants 
all  over  France.  It  is  the  one  great  spectacle  of  the  year. 

So  about  the  12th  of  August,  the  mayor  issued  placards, 
countersigned  Soudry,  which  were  posted  all  about  the  dis- 
trict, in  order  to  secure  patronage  for  the  salesmen,  acrobats, 
and  prodigies  of  all  kinds,  by  announcing  the  duration  of  the 
fair  and  enumerating  its  principal  attractions.  These  pla- 
cards, the  subject  of  La  Tonsard's  inquiries,  always  ended 
with  the  same  formula: 

"The  Tiwli  will  be  illuminated  with  colored  lamps.1' 

The  town  of  Soulanges  had,  in  fact,  adopted  the  flinty  gar- 
den of  the  Tivoli  as  its  public  ballroom.  Soulanges  is  built 
upon  a  rock,  and  almost  all  the  soil  for  its  gardens  is  im- 
ported. 

The  stony  nature  of  the  soil  determines  the  peculiar  flavor 
of  the  wine  of  the  district,  which  is  never  met  with  except 
in  thfi  penartment.  Soulanges  produces  a  dry,  white,  liqueur* 


THE  PEASANTRY  273 

like  wine,  something  like  Madeira,  Vouvray,  or  Johannis- 
berg,  those  three  crus  with  a  strong  family  resemblance. 

Socquard's  ball  made  a  prodigious  impression  on  the  na- 
tive imagination,  and  the  whole  valley  took  a  pride  in  its 
Tivoli.  Those  who  had  adventured  so  far  away  as  Paris 
said  that  the  Tivoli  there  was  no  finer,  and  only  rather 
larger  than  the  Tivoli  of  Soulanges ;  and  as  for  Gaubertin,  he 
boldly  avowed  that  he  preferred  Socquard's  ball  to  the  ball  at 
Paris. 

"Let  us  think  all  these  things  over,"  said  Rigou.  "That 
Parisian  newspaper  editor  will  very  soon  weary  of  his  amuse- 
ments, and,  by  means  of  the  servants,  we  might  induce  the 
whole  party  to  come  over.  I  will  bear  the  matter  in  mind. 
Sibilet  (though  his  credit  is  falling  shockingly  low)  might 
put  it  into  his  master's  head  that  this  would  be  a  way  to  curry 
favor  with  the  multitude." 

"Just  find  out  if  the  fair  Countess  is  cruel  to  monsieur," 
said  Lupin,  for  Eigou's  benefit.  "The  trick  we  are  to  play  off 
upon  him  at  the  Tivoli  altogether  depends  on  that." 

"That  little  woman  is  too  much  of  a  Parisienne  not  to 
know  how  to  hold  with  the  hare  and  run  with  the  hounds," 
said  Mme.  Soudry. 

"Fourchon  set  his  granddaughter  Catherine  Tonsard  on 
Charles  at  the  Aigues,  the  Upholsterer's  second  footman;  we 
shall  soon  have  a  pair  of  ears  in  the  rooms  there,"  said  Rigou. 
"Are  you  sure  of  the  Abbe  Taupin,"  he  added,  as  he  saw  the 
cure  enter  the  room. 

"He  and  the  Abbe  Moucheron  are  as  much  ours  as  Soudry 
is  mine,"  said  Mme.  Soudry,  stroking  her  husband's  chin 
with— "And  you  are  not  unhappy,  are  you  pet?" 

"I  am  counting  upon  them  for  a  scheme  for  involving  that 
hypocrite  Brossette  in  a  mess,"  said  Rigou  in  a  whisper,  as 
he  rose  to  his  feet,  "but  I  am  not  sure  that  the  fellow-feel- 
ing of  the  cloth  will  not  be  too  strong  for  patriotism.  You 
do  not  know  how  strong  it  is.  I,  for  instance,  am  no  fool, 
but  I  will  not  answer  for  myself  if  I  fall  ill.  I  shall  make 
my  peace  with  the  Church  no  doubt." 


274  THE  PEASANTRY 

"Permit  us  to  hope  so/'  said  the  cure,  for  whose  benefit 
Eigou  had  raised  his  voice. 

"Alas  I"  said  Eigou,  "the  blunder  which  I  made  by  my  mar- 
riage stands  in  the  way  of  the  reconciliation ;  I  cannot  murder 
Mme.  Kigou." 

"Meanwhile,  let  us  think  of  the  Aigues/'  said  Mmt, 
Soudry. 

"Yes,"  replied  the  Benedictine.  "Do  you  know,  I  think 
that  our  crony  yonder  at  Ville-aux-Fayes  is  more  than  a 
match  for  us? — It  is  in  my  mind  that  Gaubertin  means  to 
have  the  Aigues  to  himself,  and  that  he  will  take  us  in,"  added 
Eigou. 

On  his  way  to  Soulanges  he  had  tapped  various  dark  re- 
cesses of  the  plot  with  the  baton  of  prudence,  and  Gaubertin's 
portion  of  it  rang  hollow. 

"Why,  the  Aigues  is  not  to  belong  to  one,  but  to  all  three 
of  us,"  cried  Soudry;  "the  house  must  be  pulled  down  from 
top  to  bottom." 

"I  should  not  be  surprised  to  find  a  hoard  of  gold  in  it, 
which  is  all  the  more  reason  for  pulling  it  down,"  said  Eigou 
cunningly. 

"Pooh!" 

"Yes.  During  the  wars  in  old  times,  when  the  seigneur? 
were  often  besieged  and  surprised,  they  used  to  bury  thei? 
money  where  they  could  find  it  again ;  and  you  know  that  the 
Marquis  of  Soulanges-Hautemer,  in  whom  the  younger  branch 
expired,  was  one  of  the  victims  of  the  Biron  conspiracy.  The 
lands  were  confiscated  and  given  to  the  Comtesse  de  Moret.'; 

"What  a  thing  it  is  to  know  the  history  of  France !"  said 
Soudry.  "You  are  right.  It  is  time  that  we  came  to  an  un- 
derstanding with  Gaubertin." 

"And  if  he  tries  to  play  fast  and  loose,"  added  Eigou,  "we 
will  see  about  putting  him  in  a  stew." 

"He  is  rich  enough  to  be  honest,"  remarked  Lupin. 

"I  would  answer  for  him  as  I  would  for  myself;  there  is 
not  an  honester  man  in  the  kingdom,"  said  Mme.  Soudry. 

"Oh,  we  believe  in  his  honesty,"  Eigou  began,  "but  between 


THE  PEASANTRY  275 

friends  there  should  be  no  oversights.  By  the  by,  I  suspect 
somebody  in  Soulanges  of  trying  to  put  a  spoke  in  our 
wheel." 

"And  whom  ?"  inquired  Soudry. 

"Plissoud." 

"Plissoud!"  cried  Soudry ,"a  poor  stick !  Brunet  has  him  by 
the  leg,  and  his  wife  keeps  his  head  in  the  manger.  You  ask 
Lupin !" 

"What  can  he  do?"  asked  Lupin. 

"He  means  to  open  Montcornet's  eyes,"  said  Eigou;  "he 
means  to  use  Montcornet's  influence  to  get  himself  a 
place— 

"It  would  never  bring  him  in  as  much  as  his  wife  does  at 
Soulanges,"  said  Mme.  Soudry. 

"He  tells  his  wife  everything  when  he  is  drunk,"  remarked 
Lupin;  "we  should  know  in  time." 

"The  fair  Mme.  Plissoud  has  no  secrets  from  you,"  said 
Eigou  in  reply  to  this ;  "we  can  be  easy,  never  mind." 

"Besides,"  said  Mme.  Soudry,  "she  is  as  stupid  as  she  is 
handsome.  I  would  not  change  places  with  her.  If  I  were 
a  man,  I  should  prefer  a  woman  who  was  plain,  but  clever, 
to  a  pretty  woman  who  could  not  say  'Two.'  r' 

The  notary  bit  his  lips.  "Oh !  she  can  set  other  people  say- 
ing 'Three,' "  said  he. 

"Coxcomb !"  called  Eigou,  on  his  way  to  the  door. 

"Well,"  said  Soudry,  as  he  went  out  with  his  crony,  "we 
shall  meet  again  early  to-morrow  morning." 

"I  will  call  for  you. — Oh!  by  the  by,  Lupin,"  he  added, 
turning  to  the  notary,  who  had  left  the  room  to  order  his 
horse,  "try  to  find  out  through  Mme.  Sarcus  anything  that 
our  Upholsterer  may  contrive  against  us  at  the  prefecture." 

"If  she  cannot  find  out,  who  will  ?"  asked  Lupin. 

Eigou  looked  at  Lupin  with  a  knowing  smile.  "Pardon 
me,"  he  said,  "they  are  such  a  lot  of  noodles  in  there  that  I 
was  forgetting  that  there  was  one  clever  man  among  them." 

"Indeed,  I  wonder  myself  how  it  is  that  I  have  not  grown 
rusty,"  said  Lupin  artlessly. 

-,  i 


276  THE  PEASANTRY 

"Is  it  true  that  Soudry  has  engaged  a  housemaid  ?" 

"Why,  yes,"  said  Lupin,  "a  week  ago.  His  worship  the 
mayor  had  a  mind  to  bring  out  his  wife's  merits  by  force 
of  contrast  with  a  little  chit  of  a  Burgundian  peasant,  the 
age  of  an  old  ox.  How  he  manages  with  Mme.  Soudry  we 
cannot  guess  as  yet,  for  he  has  the  impudence  to  go  very  early 
to  bed." 

"I  will  see  into  that  to-morrow,"  said  the  village  Sardan- 
apalus,  forcing  a  smile,  and  with  that  the  two  profound 
schemers  shook  hands  and  parted. 

Eigou,  cautious  soul,  had  no  wish  to  be  benighted  on  his 
way  home,  in  spite  of  his  new-born  popularity.  "Get  along, 
citizen !"  he  called  to  his  horse,  a  joke  which  this  son  of  the 
Eevolution  never  forgot  to  cut  at  the  expense  of  the  Kevolu- 
tion.  The  bitterest  reactionaries  are  always  to  be  found 
among  those  raised  on  high  by  a  popular  upheaval. 

"Old  Rigou  pays  short  visits,"  said  Gourdon  the  registrar, 
addressing  Mme.  Soudry. 

"Short  but  sweet,"  the  lady  replied. 

"Like  his  life,"  said  the  doctor,  "that  man  is  immoderate 
in  all  things." 

"So  much  the  better,"  said  Soudry.  "My  son  will  come 
into  his  property  the  sooner." 

"Did  he  bring  any  news  from  the  Aigues  ?"  asked  the  cure. 

"Yes,  my  dear  Abbe,"  said  Mme.  Soudry.  "Those  people 
are  the  scourge  of  the  countryside.  How  Mme.  de  Mont- 
cornet,  who  is  at  any  rate  a  lady  by  birth,  should  not  under- 
stand her  interests  better,  I  cannot  conceive !" 

"And  yet  they  have  a  model  before  their  eyes,"  said  the 
cure. 

"Who  can  you  mean  ?"  simpered  Mme.  Soudry. 

"The  Soulanges " 

"Oh ! — Yes/'  added  the  queen,  after  a  pause. 

"Here  am  I,  worse  luck !"  cried  Mme.  Vermut,  as  she  came 
into  the  room,  "and  without  my  neutralizing  agent ;  though 
Vermut  is  too  neutral  where  I  am  concerned  to  be  called  an 
'agent'  of  any  kind " 


THE  PEASANTRY  277 

% 

Soudry,  standing  beside  Guerbet,  saw  the  basket-chaise 
stop  before  the  Tivoli.  "What  the  devil  is  that  blessed  Rigou 
after?"  he  exclaimed.  "The  old  tiger-cat  never  takes  a  step 
in  vain." 

"Blessed  is  just  the  word  for  a  Benedictine,"  said  the  stout 
receiver  of  taxes. 

"He  is  going  into  the  Cafe  de  la  Pcdx!"  cried  Dr.  Gourdon. 

"Keep  cool/'  said  his  brother;  "he  is  distributing  benedic- 
tions with  closed  fists,  for  you  can  hear  them  yelping  inside 
at  this  distance." 

"That  Cafe,"  began  the  cure,  "  is  like  the  temple  of  Janus. 
It  used  to  be  called  the  Cafe  de  la  Guerre  in  the  time  of  the 
Emperor,  and  the  place  was  as  peaceful  as  could  be ;  the  most 
respectable  people  used  to  go  there  for  a  friendly  chat 

"He  calls  that  chatting !"  broke  in  Sarcus.  "Ye  gods !  what 
conversation  was  it  that  produced  a  little  Bournier !" 

" But.  since  the  house  was  called  the  Cafe  de  la  Paix, 

in  honor  of  the  Bourbons,  there  is  a  brawl  there  every  day," 
pursued  the  Abbe,  finishing  the  sentence  which  the  justice 
took  the  liberty  of  interrupting.  The  cure's  joke,  like  quota- 
tions from  the  Bilboqueide,  came  up  very  frequently. 

"Which  is  as  much  as  to  say  that  Burgundy  will  always  be 
the  land  of  fisticuffs,"  said  Guerbet. 

"That  remark  of  yours  is  not  so  far  wrong,"  said  the  cure ; 
"it  is  pretty  much  the  history  of  our  country." 

"I  do  not  know  the  history  of  France,"  cried  Soudry ;  "but 
before  I  begin  upon  it,  I  should  dearly  like  to  know  why  Eigou 
went  into  the  Cafe  just  now  with  Socquard." 

"Oh,"  said  the  cure,  "it  was  on  no  charitable  errand,  you 
may  rest  assured  of  that." 

"It  makes  my  flesh  creep  to  look  at  that  man,"  said  Mme. 
Vermut. 

"He  is  so  much  to  be  feared,"  the  doctor  said,  "that  I 
should  not  feel  safe  even  after  he  were  dead  if  he  had  a  grudge 
against  me ;  he  is  just  the  man  to  get  up  out  of  his  coffin  to 
play  you  some  ugly  trick." 

"If  there  is  any  one  on  earth  who  can  send  the  Upholsterer 


278  THE  PEASANTRY 

• 

over  here  on  the  loth  and  take  him  in  s*ome  trap,  Rigou  is 
the  man  to  do  it,"  said  the  mayor  in  his  wife's  ear. 

"Especially  if  Gaubertin  and  you,  dearie,  have  a  hand  in 
it  too "  she  began  aloud. 

"There !  what  was  I  saying  just  now,"  exclaimed  Guerbet, 
nudging  M.  Sarcus'  elbow ;  "he  has  picked  up  some  pretty  girl 
at  Socquard's,  and  is  putting  her  into  his  chaise " 

"Until "  put  in  the  poet. 

"There  is  one  for  you,  whose  speech  is  without  ill  intent," 
cried  Guerbet,  interrupting  him. 

"You  are  wrong,  gentlemen,"  said  Mme.  Soudry.  "M. 
Eigou  is  thinking  only  of  our  interests ;  for,  if  I  am  not  mis- 
taken, that  girl  is  one  of  Tonsard's  daughters." 

"Laying  in  a  stock  of  vipers,  like  an  apothecary,"  cried 
Guerbet. 

"Any  one  would  think,  to  hear  you  talk,  that  you  had  seen 
our  apothecary,  M.  Vermut,"  said  Dr.  Gourdon,  indicating 
the  little  man  as  he  crossed  the  market  place. 

"Poor  old  boy !"  said  the  doctor's  brother  (suspected  of  dis- 
tilling the  volatile  elixir  of  wit  in  the  company  of  the  apothe- 
cary's wife).  "Just  see  how  he  waddles  along !  .  .  .  And 
he  is  supposed  to  be  a  scientific  man !" 

"But  for  him,"  said  the  justice,  "it  would  be  a  puzzle  to 
know  what  to  do  about  post-mortems.  He  discovered  the 
traces  of  poison  in  poor  Pigeron's  body  so  cleverly  that  the 
chemists  from  Paris  said  in  the  Court  at  Auxerre  that  they 
could  not  have  done  it  better 

"He  found  nothing  at  all,"  said  Soudry ;  "but,  as  President 
Gendrin  says,  it  is  just  as  well  that  people  should  believe 
that  poison  is  always  found  out." 

"Mme.  Pigeron  did  wisely  to  leave  Auxerre,"  said  Mme. 
Vermut.  "She  is  a  weak-minded  thing,  and  a  wicked  wo- 
man," she  added.  "As  if  there  were  not  sure  and  harmless 
methods  of  keeping  a  husband  in  order  without  having  re- 
course to  drugs  to  get  rid  of  the  genus.  I  should  very  much 
like  any  man  to  say  anjihing  against  my  conduct.  M.  Ver- 
mut, worthy  man,  is  scarcely  ever  in  my  way,  and  he  has  never 


THE  PEASANTRY  279 

been  ill;  and  look  at  Mme.  de  Montcornet,  how  she  goes  on, 
in  her  chalets  and  hermitages  and  what  not,  with  that  jour- 
nalist whom  she  brought  from  Paris  at  her  own  charges;  she 
fondles  him  under  the  General's  nose." 

"At  her  own  charges?"  cried  Mme.  Soudry.  "Is  that  a 
fact  ?  If  we  could  have  proof  of  that,  what  a  pretty  subject 
for  an  anonymous  letter  to  the  General " 

"The  General "  said  Mme.  Vermut,  "why,  you  would 

put  a  stop  to  nothing,  the  Upholsterer  follows  his  calling." 

"What  is  that,  dear?"  inquired  Mme.  Soudry. 

"Why — he  furnishes  the  bedroom." 

"If  Pigeron,  poor  fellow,  instead  of  worrying  his  wife,  had 
had  the  sense  to  do  the  same,  he  would  be  living  yet,"  said  the 
registrar. 

Mme.  Soudry  leant  towards  her  neighbor,  M.  Guerbet  of 
Conches,  and  administered  to  him  one  of  the  monkey's  gri- 
maces, inherited  (as  she  imagined)  from  her  late  mistress;  as 
if  that  mistress'  smiles,  like  her  silver-plate,  were  hers  now  by 
right  of  conquest.  She  redoubled  her  dose  as  she  indicated 
Mme.  Vermut,  who  was  flirting  with  the  poet  of  the  Bilbo- 
queide. 

"How  vulgar  that  woman  is!  What  things  she  says,  and 
what  a  way  to  behave !  I  do  not  know  whether  I  can  allow 
her  to  frequent  our  society  any  longer — especially  when  M. 
Gourdon  the  poet  is  here." 

"There  is  social  morality  summed  up  for  you!"  said  the 
cure,  who  hitherto  had  not  spoken.  He  had  watched  the 
whole  scene,  and  none  of  it  was  lost  upon  him. 

After  this  epigram,  or  rather  this  social  satire,  so  pithy  and 
so  true  that  it  went  home  to  every  one  present,  a  game  of 
boston  was  proposed. 

Is  not  this  a  true  picture  of  life  in  every  latitude  of  the 
"world,"  as  we  agree  to  call  it?  The  language  is  different, 
it  is  true,  but  are  not  the  very  same  things,  nor  more  nor 
less,  said  in  the  most  richly  gilded  salons  in  Paris  ? 


280  THE  PEASANTRY 

III 

THE  CAFE  DE  LA  PAIX 

IT  was  about  seven  o'clock  in  the  evening  when  Rigou  passed 
by  the  Cafe  de  la  Paix.  The  slanting  rays  of  the  sunset 
steeped  the  whole  picturesque  village  in  glorious  red,  and 
raised  a  riot  of  flaming  color  in  its  window-panes,  calling  up 
the  strangest  and  most  improbable  hues  to  contrast  with  the 
clear  mirror  surface  of  the  lake. 

The  deep  schemer,  brooding  over  the  plots  that  he  was 
weaving,  allowed  his  horse  to  go  at  a  foot-pace ;  so  that  as  he 
went  slowly  past  the  cafe,  he  heard  his  own  name  hurled  at 
somebody  in  the  course  of  one  of  the  brawls  which  had,  ac- 
cording to  the  Cure  Taupin,  produced  a  violent  contrast  be- 
tween the  name  of  the  house  and  ^the  chronic  condition  of 
strife  within  it. 

It  is  necessary,  for  the  sake  of  clearness,  to  enter  into  detail 
concerning  the  topography  of  this  land  of  Cocagne.  It  lay 
in  the  angle  formed  by  the  road  with  the  market  place;  on 
this  latter  side  it  was  bounded  by  the  cafe  itself,  and  along  the 
eide  of  the  road  by  the  famous  Tivoli,  which  was  intended  to 
be  the  scene  of  one  of  the  episodes  in  the  conspiracy  against 
Montcornet. 

The  house  was  built  after  the  fashion  of  Rigou's  parsonage. 
Three  ground-floor  windows  looked  upon  the  road,  and  in  the 
front,  a  glass  entrance-door,  with  a  window  on  each  side  of 
it,  gave  upon  the  market-place.  There  was  another  door  at 
the  side  which  gave  admittance  to  the  backyard,  by  way  of 
a  narrow  passage  which  separated  the  cafe  from  the  next 
house,  where  Vallet,  the  Soulanges  haberdasher,  lived.  The 
whole  building,  the  green  shutters  only  excepted,  was  painted 
a  bright  yellow.  It  w~s  OT1°  of  +he  few  houses  in  the  little 
town  which  could  boast  of  two  stories  and  an  attic  floor,  and 
had  been  so  built  for  the  following  reasons. 


THE  PEASANTRY  281 

In  days  before  Ville-aux-Fayes  attained  its  present  amazing 
prosperity,  and  Soulanges  was  the  principal  place  in  the  baili- 
wick, people  who  came  on  judicial  business,  or  visitors  for 
whom  there  was  no  room  at  the  chateau,  used  to  occupy  the 
first-floor  rooms,  four  apartments  provided  with  a  bed  apiece, 
and  just  sufficient  necessaries  to  justify  the  appellation  of 
"furnished  lodgings ;"  but  for  the  past  twenty-five  years  their 
only  occupants  had  been  acrobats,  itinerant  quacks,  hawkers, 
and  commercial  travelers.  At  fair-time  the  rooms  let  for 
four  francs  a  day,  and  Socquard's  four  apartments  brought 
him  some  three  hundred  francs,  to  say  nothing  of  the  in- 
crease of  custom  to  his  cafe. 

The  front  of  the  house  in  the  market-place  was  adorned 
with  paintings  specially  designed  for  it.  In  the  wall  space  on 
either  side  of  the  door  you  beheld  billiard  cues  intertwined 
with  love-knots,  and,  above  the  loops  of  ribbon,  steaming 
punch-bowls  shaped  like  Greek  drinking-cups.  The  words 
CAFE"  DE  LA  PAIX  blazed  in  yellow  on  a  green  background, 
with  a  pyramid  of  billiard-balls,  red,  white,  and  blue,  at 
either  end.  The  window-sashes,  painted  green,  contained 
small  squares  of  cheap  glass. 

Half  a  score  of  arbor  vitas  shrubs  in  boxes  (some  one  ought 
to  rename  the  plants  the  "Cafe  tree")  stood  on  either  side 
the  entrance  door,  a  row  of  pretentious  failures  in  vegetable 
life.  The  awnings,  such  as  shopkeepers  use  in  Paris  and  other 
great  cities  to  screen  their  wares  from  the  sun,  were  luxuries 
unknown  in  Soulanges ;  so  each  bottle  in  the  window  fulfilled 
the  functions  of  a  chemist's  flask,  for  its  contents  were  peri- 
odically recooked  inside  it.  The  lens-shaped  bosses  on  the 
window  panes  caught  the  rays  of  the  sun  like  burning-glasses, 
set  the  wines,  liqueurs,  and  syrups  boiling,  and  stewed  the 
plumbs  and  cherries  in  the  brandy.  So  great  was  the  heat 
that  Aglae,  her  father,  and  the  waiter  were  driven  of  an  after- 
noon to  take  refuge  on  the  benches  outside,  under  the  feeble 
shadow  of  the  luckless  shrubs  which  Mile.  Socquard  sprinkled 
with  tepid  water.  There  were  days  when  all  three — father, 
daughter,  and  waiter — lay  stretched  out  like  domestic  ani- 
mals, fast  asleep. 


282  THE  PEASANTRY 

The  interior  of  the  cafe  had  been  papered  in  1804  with 
scenes  from  the  romance  of  Paul  et  Virginie,  then  in  vogue. 
You  beheld  negroes  cultivating  coffee,  which  thus,  at  any 
rate,  could  be  found  on  the  wall-paper,  if  nowhere  else,  in  an 
establishment  where  scarce  a  score  of  cups  were  called  for 
in  a  month.  Colonial  products  entered  so  little  into  ordinary 
life  at  Soulanges,  that  Socquard  would  have  been  at  its  wits' 
end  if  a  stranger  had  asked  for  chocolate.  The  beverage 
would,  however,  have  been  forthcoming,  and  the  customer 
would  have  been  supplied  with  a  nauseous  brown  broth  pro- 
duced by  boiling  one  of  the  tablets  sold  for  two  sous  by  coun- 
try grocers,  an  adulterated  compound  containing  more  starch, 
raw  sugar,  and  pounded  almonds  than  either  genuine  cocoa 
or  sugar,  and  fabricated  to  ruin  the  trade  in  Spanish  choco- 
late. 

As  to  the  coffee,  Father  Socquard  simply  boiled  it  in  a 
large  pipkin  known  in  most  households  as  "the  big  brown 
pot."  He  dropped  in  the  mixture  of  powder  and  chicory,  and, 
with  intrepidity  which  a  Parisian  waiter  might  have  envied, 
served  up  the  decoction  forthwith  in  an  earthenware  cup 
which  had  nothing  to  dread  from  a  fall  on  the  floor. 

Sugar  was  still  regarded  in  Soulanges  with  a  reverence 
which  dated  from  the  days  of  the  Empire;  Aglae  Socquard 
courageously  brought  out  four  whole  lumps  of  sugar  as  large 
as  hazel  nuts,  with  a  cup  of  coffee  for  an  itinerant  hawker 
who  had  taken  it  into  his  head  to  call  for  that  beverage  of 
the  man  of  letters. 

There  had  been  no  change  in  the  cafe  since  the  day  when 
all  Soulanges  flocked  to  admire  the  new  bewitching  wall  deco- 
ration of  gilt-framed  mirrors  alternating  with  brass  hat-pegs, 
the  counter  painted  to  resemble  mahogany,  the  reddish  marble 
slab,  with  its  gleaming  plated  vessels,  and  Argand  lamps, 
stated  by  rumor  to  be  Gaubertin's  gift  to  that  fine  woman 
Mme.  Socquard.  Everything  was  besmeared  with  a  soft, 
sticky  compound,  which  can  only  be  compared  to  the  surface 
of  old  pictures  which  have  lain  forgotten  in  a  lumber  room. 

Suspended  by  a  chain  from  the  ceiling  hung  an  Argand 


THE  PEASANTRY  283 

lamp  adorned  with  cut-glass  drops,  and  provided  with  a  globe- 
shaped  oil  reservoir  which  fed  two  separate  wicks ;  the  tables 
were  painted  to  resemble  marble,  the  seats  upholstered  with 
crimson  Utrecht  velvet, — all  these  things  had  contributed  to 
make  the  reputation  of  the  Cafe  de  la  Guerre. 

Thither,  from  1802  till  1804,  the  townspeople  of  Soulanges 
repaired  to  play  at  dominoes  or  ~brelan,  and  to  partake  of 
glasses  of  liqueur  or  spiced  wine,  with  brandied  fruits  and  bis- 
cuits; for  colonial  produce  was  so  dear  that  coffee,  chocolate, 
and  sugar  were  out  of  the  question.  Punch,  like  bavaroise, 
was  a  great  delicacy,  and  compounded  with  some  strange, 
ropy,  sweetening  substance  not  unlike  treacle.  The  name  has 
been  lost,  but  the  substance  made  the  inventor's  fortune. 

This  concise  account  will  suffice  to  conjure  up  similar  pict- 
ures in  the  memories  of  those  who  have  traveled  in  the  prov- 
inces; and  others  who  have  never  left  Paris  can  form  some 
dim  idea  of  the  smoke-begrimed  ceiling  of  the  Cafe  de  la  Paix, 
and  its  mirrors  dimmed  with  myriads  of  dark  specks  to  bear 
witness  to  the  independence  of  the  dipterous  tribes  of  Bur- 
gundy. 

Socquard's  wife,  a  beauty,  who  in  the  matter  of  gallant 
adventures  surpassed  La  Tonsard  of  the  Grand-I-Vert,  had 
once  queened  it  there,  dressed  in  the  latest  fashion.  She  af- 
fected the  sultana's  turban,  for  in  the  days  of  the  Empire  the 
"sultana"  enjoyed  the  vogue  of  the  "angel"  of  the  present 
day. 

The  whole  feminine  world  of  the  valley  repaired  to  Sou- 
langes to  copy  the  beauty's  turbans,  poke-bonnets,  furred  caps, 
and  coiffures  chinoises.  All  the  bigwigs  of  Soulanges  were 
laid  under  contribution  for  these  splendors.  During  the 
period  of  the  short-waisted  gowns  which  our  mothers  wore  in 
the  pride  of  their  Imperial  graces,  Junie  (for  her  name  was 
Junie!)  founded  the  house  of  Socquard;  her  husband  owed 
to  her  a  vineyard,  the  house  in  which  they  lived,  and  the 
Tivoli.  It  was  said  that  M.  Lupin's  father  did  reckless 
things  for  handsome  Junie  Socquard ;  it  was  certain  that  she 

presented  Gaubertin  (his  successor)  with  little  Bournier. 
VOL.  10 — 44 


284  THE  PEASANTRY 

These  little  matters,  and  the  mysterious  skill  with  which 
Socquard  compounded  his  spiced  wine,  would  be  sufficient  in 
themselves  to  account  for  the  popularity  of  the  cafe ;  but  there 
were,  besides,  plenty  of  contributory  causes.  Wine,  and  wine 
only,  could  be  obtained  at  the  Grand-I-Vert  or  at  any  of  the 
little  taverns  in  the  valley,  but  at  Socquard's  cafe  there  were 
liqueurs  and  foreign  wines  and  fruits  in  brandy.  It  was  the 
only  place  between  Conches  and  Ville-aux-Fayes,  and  for  six 
leagues  round,  where  you  could  play  a  game  of  billiards,  and 
nowhere  else  would  you  find  such  admirable  punch.  So  the 
valley  rang  almost  daily  with  the  fame  of  a  cafe  associated 
with  every  idea  of  the  utmost  refinement  of  luxury  for  those 
people  whose  sensibility  resided  in  their  stomachs  rather  than 
in  their  hearts.  Add  to  these  reasons  yet  another.  All  who 
frequented  the  place  felt  that  it  was  a  privilege  to  form  an 
integral  part  of  the  Soulanges  festival. 

The  Cafe  de  la  Palx  fulfilled  the  same  end  as  the  Grand-I- 
Vert,  but  in  a  town  and  in  a  sphere  immediately  above  that 
of  the  tavern.  It  was  a  storehouse  of  poison,  a  half-way  house 
for  gossip  between  Ville-aux-Fayes  and  the  valley.  The 
Grand-I-Vert  supplied  the  cafe  with  milk  and  cream,  and 
Tonsard's  daughters  were  in  constant  communication  with 
the  latter  establishment. 

For  Socquard  the  market  square  of  Soulanges  was  an  ap- 
purtenance of  his  cafe.  Hercules-Socquard  went  from  door 
to  door,  chatting  with  one  and  another,  wearing  for  all  cos- 
tume a  pair  of  trousers  and  an  imperfectly  buttoned  waist- 
coat, after  the  manner  of  country  bar-keepers.  The  folk  with 
whom  he  chatted  gave  him  warning  if  any  one  happened  to 
enter  his  establishment,  and  he  returned  thither  laggingly 
and,  as  it  were,  reluctant. 

These  details  should  suffice  to  convince  the  Parisian  who 
has  never  stirred  from  Paris  that  it  would  be  difficult — let  us 
go  further,  and  say  that  it  would  be  impossible — to  conceal 
the  most  trifling  matter  in  the  whole  valley  of  the  Avonne 
from  Conches  to  Ville-aux-Fayes.  There  is  no  breach  of  con- 
tinuity in  country  districts.  There  are  taverns  like  the 


THE  PEASANTRY  283 

Grand-I-Vert  and  Cafe  de  la  Paix  dotted  about  from  place  to 
place  to  catch  and  echo  every  sound.  Matters  which  possess 
absolutely  no  interest  for  anybody,  accomplished,  to  boot,  in 
the  strictest  privacy,  are  bruited  abroad  by  a  sort  of  witch- 
craft. Gossip  fulfils  the  functions  of  the  electric  telegraph, 
and  by  such  apparatus  evil  tidings  are  borne  prodigious  dis- 
tances in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye. 

Eigou  checked  his  horse,  alighted,  and  made  the  bridle  fast 
to  one  of  the  door-posts  at  the  Tivoli.  Next  he  discovered  a 
plausible  pretext  for  listening  to  the  dispute  by  seating  him- 
self between  two  of  the  windows,  in  such  a  position  that  if 
he  stretched  his  neck  a  little,  he  could  see  the  persons  within 
and  watch  their  movements,  while  at  the  same  time  he  could 
hear  the  coarse  words  which  shook  the  windows,  and  remain 
outside  in  perfect  quiet. 

"And  if  I  were  to  tell  old  Eigou  that  your  brother  Nicolas 
has  a  grudge  against  La  Pechina,  and  is  always  on  the  watch 
for  her,"  shouted  a  shrill  voice,  "and  that  she  will  slip  away 
under  your  seigneur's  hands,  he  would  soon  tear  the  tripes 
out  of  the  lot  of  you  such  as  you  are ;  a  pack  of  scoundrels  at 
the  Grand-I-Vert!" 

"And  if  you  play  us  such  a  trick,  Aglae,"  yelled  Marie  Ton- 
sard,  "I'll  do  that  to  you  which  you  will  never  tell  to  any 
but  the  worms  in  your  coffin.  Don't  you  meddle  in  Nicolas' 
affairs,  nor  yet  in  mine  with  Bonnebault !" 

Marie,  urged  by  her  grandmother,  had  followed  Bonne- 
bault on  a  spy's  errand.  Through  the  window  at  which  Eigou 
had  stationed  himself,  she  had  seen  Bonnebault  displaying 
his  airs  and  graces  for  Mile.  Socquard,  who  felt  bound  to 
smile  on  a  customer  in  return  for  his  sufficiently  agreeable 
compliments.  That  smile  had  brought  on  the  tempestuous 
scene  and  a  lightning  flash  of  a  revelation  of  no  small  value 
to  Eigou. 

"Well,  Father  Eigou,  are  you  helping  to  wear  out  my  prem- 
ises?" It  was  Socquard's  voice,  and  he  clapped  the  money- 
lender on  the  shoulder. 

The  saloon-keeper  had  just  returned  from  an  outhouse  at 


286  THE  PEASANTRY 

the  end  of  the  garden,  whence  such  machinery  as  whirligigs, 
see-saws,  and  weighing  machines  were  being  brought  out  to 
be  put  in  their  places  in  the  Tivoli  for  the  delectation  of  the 
public.  Socquard  had  come  up  noiselessly,  for  he  was  shod 
with  the  cheap  yellow  leather  slippers  which  are  sold  in  such 
quantities  in  the  provinces. 

"If  you  had  fresh  lemons,  I  would  take  a  glass  of  lemon- 
ade," said  Rigou  in  answer ;  "it  is  hot  this  evening." 

"But  who  is  there  squalling  inside  in  such  a  way?"  asked 
Socquard,  and  looking  through  the  window,  he  beheld  his 
daughter  and  Marie  at  close  quarters. 

"They  are  fighting  for  Bonnebault,"  said  Rigou,  with  a 
sardonic  glance. 

Socquard  choked  down  a  father's  annoyance  in  the  interests 
of  the  saloon-keeper.  The  saloon-keeper  thought  it  the  more 
prudent  course  to  follow  Rigou's  example  and  listen  to  the 
sounds  from  without;  while  the  father  in  him  yearned  to 
enter  and  declare  that  Bonnebault,  though  full  of  estimable 
qualities  as  a  customer,  was  absolutely  worthless  considered 
as  the  son-in-law  of  a  Soulanges  notable.  Yet,  Father  Soc- 
quard had  received  but  few  offers  of  marriage  for  his  daugh- 
ter. The  girl  was  twenty-two  years  old,  and  in  height,  weight, 
and  size  she  rivaled  Mme.  Vermichel,  whose  activity  was  a 
standing  marvel.  A  life  behind  a  counter  appeared  to  have 
developed  a  tendency  to  corpulence,  which  Aglae  inherited 
from  her  father. 

"What  the  devil  has  got  the  girls?"  inquired  Socquard  of 
his  neighbor. 

"Oh,"  said  the  Benedictine,  "  'tis  a  devil  which  the  Church 
has  caught  more  often  than  any  other." 

For  all  answer  Socquard  fell  to  examining  the  painted  bill- 
iard cues  on  the  wall  between  the  windows.  Patches  of  plas- 
ter had  dropped  away,  till  the  beholder  was  puzzled  to  un- 
derstand how  they  had  once  been  bound  together. 

At  that  very  moment  Bonnebault  issued  from  the  billiard- 
room,  cue  in  hand,  and  struck  Marie  smartly  on  the  shoulder. 

"You  have  made  me  miss  my  stroke,"  he  cried,  "but  I  shall 


THE  PEASANTRY  287 

not  miss  you,  and  I  shall  keep  on  until  you  clap  a  stopper  on 
your  gab." 

Socquard  and  Rigou  thought  it  time  to  interfere.  Both 
of  them  went  inside,  and  immediately,  with  a  sound  as  of  the 
distant  practice  of  a  drum  corps,  there  arose  such  a  swarm 
of  flies  that  the  room  was  darkened.  After  the  first  alarm, 
however,  the  cloud  of  huge  blue-bottles  and  bloodthirsty 
smaller  brethren,  with  a  gadfly  or  two  among  them,  settled 
down  again  among  a  regiment  of  sticky-looking  bottles  on  a 
triple  row  of  shelves  so  black  with  specks  that  the  paint  be- 
neath was  quite  invisible. 

Marie  was  crying.  To  be  beaten  by  the  man  she  loves  be- 
neath the  eyes  of  a  rival  is  a  humiliation  which  no  woman 
will  endure,  no  matter  what  her  position  in  the  social  scale. 
Indeed,  the  lower  her  rank,  the  more  violent  the  expression 
of  her  hatred.  Marie  Tonsard  saw  neither  Socquard  nor 
Rigou.  She  sank  upon  a  seat  in  gloomy  and  ferocious  silence. 
The  old  Benedictine  eyed  her  euriously. 

"Aglae,"  said  Socquard,  "go  and  find  a  fresh  lemon,  and 
rinse  a  wineglass  yourself." 

"You  did  wisely  to  send  your  daughter  away,"  said  Rigou 
in  a  low  voice ;  "she  might  perhaps  have  been  killed  in  another 
moment,"  and  he  glanced  significantly  at  Marie  Tonsard's 
hand.  She  had  caught  up  a  stool,  and  was  about  to  hurl  it  at 
Aglae's  head. 

"Come,  come !  Marie,"  said  old  Socquard,  stepping  in  front 
of  her,  "people  do  not  come  here  to  fling  stools  about,  and  if 
you  were  to  break  my  glasses  there  would  be  a  bill  which  you 
would  not  pay  me  in  cow's  milk — 

"Father  Socquard,  your  daughter  is  a  reptile.  I  am  every 
bit  as  good  as  she  is,  do  you  hear !  If  you  do  not  want  Bonne- 
bault  for  a  son-in-law,  it  is  time  that  you  told  him  to  go  and 
play  billiards  somewhere  else;  he  is  losing  five  francs  every 
minute " 

At  the  first  outburst  of  a  flood  of  words,  which  were 
shrieked  aloud  rather  than  spoken,  Socquard  took  Marie  by 
the  waist  and  flung  her  out  at  the  door  in  spite  of  her  cries 


288  THE  PEASANTRY 

and  struggles.  He  was  not  a  moment  too  soon;  Bonnebault 
came  out  of  the  billiard-room  for  the  second  time,  his  eyes 
ablaze. 

"It  shall  not  end  like  this !"  screamed  Marie  Tonsard. 

"You !  bow  yourself  out !"  yelled  Bonnebault  ( Viollet  had 
thrown  his  arms  about  him  to  prevent  violence).  "Be  off!  or 
I  will  never  speak  to  you  nor  look  at  you  again." 

"You!"  cried  Marie,  glancing  at  Bonnebault  with  fury  in 
her  eyes.  "Give  me  back  my  money  first,  and  I  will  leave 
you  to  Mademoiselle  Socquard,  if  she  is  rich  enough  to  keep 

you " 

At  this  point  Marie  was  frightened,  for  she  saw  that 
Hercules-Socquard  could  scarcely  master  Bonnebault,  and 
with  a  tigress'  spring  she  fled  out  into  the  road. 

Kigou  put  Marie  into  his  chaise  to  hide  her  from  the  furious 
Bonnebault,  whose  voice  reached  the  Soudry  house  across  the 
square;  then,  when  Marie  was  hidden  away,  he  returned  for 
his  glass  of  lemonade,  examining  meanwhile  the  group  formed 
by  Plissoud,  Amaury,  Viollet,  and  the  waiter,  who  were  all 
endeavoring  to  calm  Bonnebault. 

"Come,  hussar !  it  is  your  turn,"  said  Amaury,  a  short,  fair- 
haired,  blear-eyed  young  man. 

"And  besides,  she  has  gone  away,"  said  Viollet. 

If  ever  surprise  was  expressed  on  human  countenance,  it 
was  visible  in  Plissoud's  face  when  he  discovered  that  the 
usurer  of  Blangy,  sitting  at  one  of  the  tables  while  the  quar- 
rel went  on,  was  paying  more  attention  to  him,  Plissoud, 
than  to  the  two  girls.  The  Clerk  of  the  Court  was  thrown 
off  his  guard,  his  face  wore  the  peculiar  startled  look  that 
a  man  wears  when  he  comes  suddenly  on  another  man  against 
whom  he  is  plotting.  He  went  abruptly  back  to  the  billiard- 
room. 

"Good-day,  Father  Socquard,"  said  Eigou. 

"I  will  bring  your  carriage  round,"  said  Socquard;  "take 
your  time." 

"How  could  one  get  to  know  what  they  say  over  their  bill- 
iards?" said  Rigou  to  himself;  and  just  then  he  saw  the 
waiter's  face  in  the  looking-glass. 


THE  PEASANTRY  289 

The  waiter  was  a  man-of-all-work.  He  pruned  Socquard's 
vines,  swept  out  the  cafe  and  billiard  saloon,  kept  the  garden 
in  order,  and  watered  the  floor  of  the  Tivoli,  and  all  for  the 
sum  of  sixty  francs  per  annum.  He  never  wore  a  jacket  save 
on  great  occasions;  his  costume  consisted  of  a  pair  of  blue 
linen  trousers,  heavy  shoes,  and  a  striped  velvet  waistcoat, 
with  the  addition  of  a  coarse  homespun  apron  when  on  duty 
in  the  cafe  or  billiard-room.  Those  apron-strings  were  hip 
insignia  of  office.  Socquard  hired  the  young  fellow  at  the 
last  fair;  for  in  that  valley,  and  all  over  Burgundy  for  that 
matter,  servants  are  hired  by  the  year,  and  come  to  the  hiring 
fair  exactly  like  horses. 

"What  is  your  name?"  asked  Eigou. 

"Michel,  at  your  service,"  the  lad  answered. 

"Does  Daddy  Fourchon  come  here  now  and  again?" 

"Two  or  three  times  a  week  with  M.  Vermichel.  M.  Ver- 
michel  gives  me  a  few  sous  for  letting  him  know  when  his 
wife  is  going  to  pounce  in  upon  him." 

"He  is  a  good  man,  is  Daddy  Fourchon;  he  has  had  some 
education,  and  has  plenty  of  common-sense,"  said  Eigou,  and 
he  paid  for  his  lemonade,  and  left  the  stale-smelling  room  as 
Socquard  brought  the  chaise  round  to  the  door. 

Eigou  had  just  taken  his  seat  when  he  saw  the  apothecary, 
and  hailed  him  with,  "Hallo !  M.  Vermut !"  Vermut  looked 
upj  and  seeing  Eigou,  hastened  towards  him.  Eigou  stepped 
down  again,  and  said  in  Vermut's  ear,  "Do  you  know  whether 
there  is  an  irritant  which  can  destroy  the  skin  and  induce 
disease — say  a  whitlow  on  the  finger,  for  instance?" 

"If  M.  Gourdon  undertakes  it,  yes,"  said  the  man  of  drugs. 

"Vennut,  not  a  word  of  this  to  any  one,  if  you  do  not  want 
us  to  fall  out.  But  tell  M.  Gourdon  about  it,  and  tell  him  to 
come  to  see  me,  the  day  after  to-morrow,  and  I  will  give  him 
a  forefinger  to  amputate — it  will  be  rather  a  delicate  job." 

And  with  that  the  ex-mayor  stepped  into  his  chaise  beside 
Marie  Tonsard,  leaving  the  little  apothecary  dumfounded. 

"Well,  little  viper,"  said  Eigou,  laying  a  hand  on  the 
girl's  arm,  after  fastening  the  reins  to  a  ring  on  the  leather 


290  THE  PEASANTRY 

apron  which  covered  them  in.  "So  you  think  you  will  keep 
Bonnebault  by  giving  way  to  temper  like  this,  do  you?  If 
you  were  wise,  you  would  help  on  his  marriage  with  that  big 
lump  of  stupidity,  and  then  you  could  take  your  revenge." 

Marie  could  not  help  smiling  as  she  answered,  "Oh !  what  a 
bad  man  you  are !  You  are  our  master,  and  that  is  the  truth.'* 

"Listen,  Marie ;  I  am  a  friend  to  the  peasants,  but  I  cannot 
have  one  of  you  come  and  put  himself  between  my  teeth  and 
a  mouthful  of  game.  Your  brother  Nicolas,  as  Aglae  said,  is 
waylaying  La  Pechina.  It  is  not  right,  for  the  child  is  under 
my  protection;  she  is  down  in  my  will  for  thirty  thousand 
francs,  and  I  mean  her  to  make  a  good  match.  I  know  that 
Nicolas,  with  your  sister  Catherine  to  help  him,  all  but  killed 
the  poor  child  this  morning;  you  will  see  your  brother  and 
sister,  tell  them  this — 'If  you  let  La  Pechina  alone,  Father 
Bigou  will  save  Nicolas  from  the  conscription ' " 

"You  are  the  Devil  himself,"  cried  Marie.  "People  say 
that  you  have  signed  a  compact  with  him.  Is  it  possible  ?" 

"Yes,"  said  Bigou,  with  gravity. 

"They  used  to  say  so  at  'up-sittings/  but  I  did  not  believe 
them." ' 

"The  Devil  promised  that  no  attempts  upon  my  life  should 
succeed;  that  I  should  never  be  robbed;  that  I  should  live  for 
a  hundred  years  without  an  illness;  that  I  should  succeed 
in  everything  that  I  undertook,  and  until  the  hour  of  my 
death  I  should  be  as  young  as  a  two-year  cockerel " 

"As  you  certainly  are,"  said  Marie.  "Well,  then,  it  is 
devilish  easy  for  you  to  save  my  brother  from  the  army — 

"If  he  has  a  mind ;  for  he  will  have  to  lose  a  finger,  that  is 
all,"  said  Bigou.  "I  will  tell  him  how." 

"Why,  you  are  taking  the  upper  road !"  said  Marie.         , 

"I  never  go  the  other  way  of  a  night,"  said  the  unfrocked 
monk. 

"Because  of  the  Crucifix?"  queried  Marie  artlessly. 

"That  is  just  it,  cunning  girl !"  returned  the  diabolical 
personage. 

They  were  reaching  a  spot  where  the  road  lay  in  a  hollow, 


THE  PEASANTRY  291 

a  cutting  through  a  furrow  in  the  land,  with  a  tolerably 
steep  bank  rising  on  either  side  such  as  you  often  see  on 
French  cross-country  roads.  On  the  hither  side  of  this  hollow 
the  road  forked  to  Cerneux  and  Eonquerolles,  and  in  the 
angle  of  the  fork  a  Crucifix  stood.  Any  one  standing  on 
either  bank  might  fire  on  his  man  to  a  certainty,  for  he  could 
almost  clap  the  muzzle  in  the  passenger's  face;  and  this  was 
the  more  easy,  since  that  the  slopes  behind  were  covered  with 
vines,  and  there  were  chance-sown  brambles  and  bushes  on 
the  bank  which  afforded  cover.  It  may  be  guessed,  therefore, 
why  the  usurer,  with  unfailing  prudence,  never  went  that 
way  at  night.  The  Thune  flows  round  the  base  of  the  little 
hill  which  they  call  the  Cross  Green.  Never  was  there  a 
spot  better  adapted  for  murder  and  vengeance,  for  the  Eon- 
querolles road  runs  down  to  the  bridge  over  the  Avonne  by 
the  hunting-lodge,  and  the  road  to  Cerneux  crosses  the  high 
road  in  such  a  sort  that  the  murderer  would  practically  have 
a  choice  of  four  roads,  and  might  fly  in  the  direction  of  the 
Aigues,  or  Ville-aux-Fayes,  or  Ronquerolles,  or  Cerneux,  and 
leave  his  pursuers  in  perplexity  as  to  the  way  he  had  taken. 

"I  will  set  you  down  just  outside  the  village,"  said  Eigou, 
when  they  came  in  sight  of  the  first  houses  of  Blangy. 

"Because  of  Annette,  you  old  coward !"  cried  Marie.  "Are 
you  going  to  send  that  girl  away  soon?  You  have  had  her 
for  three  years.  .  .  .  What  amuses  me  is  that  your  old 
woman  is  so  well.  God  avenges  Himself." 


IV 

THE   TRIUMVIRATE    OF    VILLE-AUX-FAYES 

THE  prudent  money-lender  had  made  a  law  that  his  wife  and 
Jean  should  sleep  between  sunset  and  sunrise,  proving  to 
them  that  the  house  would  never  be  robbed  while  he  himself 
sat  up  till  midnight  and  lay  late.  Not  only  had  he  secured 
the  house  to  himself  between  the  hours  of  seven  in  the  even- 


292  THE  PEASANTRY 

ing  and  five  in  the  morning,  but  he  accustomed  both  wife  and 
man  to  respect  his  slumbers  and  those  of  the  Hagar  whose 
room  lay  beyond  his  own. 

So  the  next  morning  about  half-past  six,  Mme.  Kigou  came 
and  knocked  timidly  at  her  husband's  door.  (With  Jean's 
aid  she  had  already  looked  after  the  poultry.)  "M.  Bigou," 
she  said,  "you  asked  me  to  call  you." 

The  sound  of  the  woman's  voice,  her  bearing,  and  the  way 
in  which  she  obeyed  an  order,  quaking  all  the  while  lest  her 
very  obedience  should  be  taken  amiss,  showed  the  utter  im- 
molation of  the  poor  creature  to  her  ingenious  petty  tyrant 
and  her  affection  for  him. 

"All  right !"  cried  Eigou. 

"Is  Annette  to  be  wakened  too?" 

"No.  Let  her  sleep  on.  She  has  been  up  all  night,"  he  an- 
swered bravely.  The  man  was  always  seridus  even  when  he 
indulged  in  a  joke.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Annette  had  secretly 
opened  the  door  to  Sibilet,  Fourchon,  and  Catherine  Tonsard, 
all  of  whom  came  at  different  times  between  eleven  and  one 
o'clock  that  morning. 

Ten  minutes  later  Eigou  came  downstairs.  He  was  dressed 
more  carefully  than  usual,  and  greeted  his  wife  with  a  "Good- 
morning,  old  woman,"  which  made  her  prouder  than  she 
would  have  been  to  see  a  Montcornet  at  her  feet. 

"Jean,"  said  Eigou,  addressing  the  lay-brother,  "don't  leave 
the  house.  Don't  let  them  rob  me ;  you  would  lose  more  by 
it  than  I." 

It  was  by  mingling  kindness,  and  rebuffs,  and  hope,  and 
hard  words,  in  this  way,  that  the  learned  egotist  had  broken 
in  his  three  slaves  to  a  dog-like  fidelity  and  attachment. 

Again  Eigou  took  the  upper  road  to  avoid  the  Cross  Green, 
and  reached  the  market-place  of  Soulanges  about  eight 
o'clock.  He  had  just  made  the  reins  fast  to  the  nearest  post 
by  the  flight  of  steps,  when  a  shutter  was  put  back,  and  Sou- 
dry  exhibited  his  countenance.  Two  small,  black  eyes  gave 
a  cunning  expression  to  a  face  seamed  by  the  smallpox. 

"Let  us  begin  by  breaking  a  crust  together,"  he  said,  "for 


THE  PEASANTRY  293 

we  shall  not  get  breakfast  at  Ville-aux-Fayes  before  one 
o'clock." 

He  called  under  his  breath  to  a  damsel  as  young  and 
pretty  as  Eigou's  servant.  The  girl  came  noiselessly  down 
the  stairs ;  he  bade  her  bring  a  piece  of  ham  and  some  bread, 
and  went  himself  to  the  cellar  for  wine. 

For  the  thousandth  time  Eigou  contemplated 'the  parlor; 
the  oak  wainscot  that  rose  to  elbow  height,  the  mouldings  on 
the  ceiling,  the  spacious  handsomely  painted  cupboards,  the 
neat  stove,  and  the  magnificent  timepiece  which  once  belonged 
to  Mile.  Laguerre.  The  backs  of  the  chairs  were  lyre-shaped ; 
the  woodwork  painted  white  and  varnished;  the  seats  were 
of  green  morocco  with  gilded  nail-heads.  The  massive  ma- 
hogany table  was  covered  with  green  oilcloth,  scored  with 
dark  lines,  and  bound  with  green  binding.  The  pains  which 
Urbain  bestowed  on  the  polishing  of  the  parquetry  floor  at- 
tested the  fact  that  his  mistress  had  herself  been  a  domestic 
servant. 

"Pshaw !"  said  Eigou  to  himself.  "This  kind  of  thing  costs 
too  much.  One  can  eat  just  as  comfortably  in  my  room  at 
home,  and  I  save  the  interest  on  the  money  laid  out  in  this 
useless  show. — Why,  where  is  Mme.  Soudry?"  he  inquired, 
as  the  mayor  of  Soulanges  came  in  with  a  venerable  bottle  in 
his  hand. 

"She  is  asleep." 

"And  you  do  not  disturb  her  slumbers  much,"  said  Eigou. 

The  old  gendarme  winked  facetiously,  and  indicated  the 
ham  which  the  pretty  Jeannette  was  bringing  in. 

"A  nice  morsel  like  that  wakes  you  up,"  he  said,  "home 
cured !  We  only  cut  into  it  yesterday." 

"I  would  not  have  thought  it  of  you,  old  chum;  where  did 
you  pick  her  up  ?"  asked  the  old  monk,  lowering  his  voice  for 
Soudry's  ear. 

"Like  the  ham,"  said  the  gendarme,  with  another  wink, 
"she  has  been  in  the  house  for  a  week." 

Jeannette  still  wore  her  night-cap,  and  had  thrust  her  bare 
feet  into  her  slippers.  She  wore  a  short  petticoat,  and  the 
straps  of  her  bodice  were  passed  over  her  shoulders  in  peasant 


294  THE  PEASANTRY 

fashion;  the  crossed  folds  of  a  bandana  handkerchief  could 
not  altogether  hide  her  fresh  and  youthful  charms ;  altogether 
she  looked  no  less  appetizing  than  the  ham  vaunted  by  Sou- 
dry.  She  was  plump  and  short.  The  mottled  red  of  the  bare 
arms  that  hung  by  her  side,  the  large  dimpled  hands  and 
short  fingers  shapely  fashioned  at  the  tips,  all  spoke  of  high 
health.  Add  to  this  a  face  of  a  thoroughly  Burgundian  type, 
ruddy,  but  white  at  the  temples,  ears,  and  throat;  chestnut 
hair,  eyes  which  turned  slightly  upwards  at  the  outer  corners ; 
wide  nostrils,  a  sensual  mouth,  and  a  trace  of  down  upon  the 
cheeks.  With  a  lively  expression  tempered  by  a  deceptive 
demureness,  she  was  the  very  model  of  a  roguish  servant  girl. 

'"'Upon  my  word,  Jeannette  is  like  the  ham/'  declared 
Eigou.  "If  I  had  not  an  Annette,  I  should  like  a  Jeannette." 

"One  is  as  good  as  the  other,"  said  Soudry,  "for  your  An- 
nette is  fair,  and  soft,  and  delicate. — How  is  Mme.  Eigou? 
Is  she  asleep  ?"  Soudry  resumed  abruptly,  to  show  Eigou  that 
he  understood  the  jest. 

"She  wakes  at  cock-crow,"  said  Eigou,  "but  she  goes  to 
roost  with  the  hens.  I  stay  up  myself  and  read  the  Constitu- 
tionnel.  Evening  and  morning  my  wife  lets  me  dose;  she 
would  not  come  into  the  room  for  the  world " 

"Here  it  is  just  the  other  way,"  put  in  Jeannette.  "The 
mistress  sits  up  with  company  and  plays  at  cards;  there  are 
sometimes  fifteen  of  them  in  the  drawing-room.  The  master 
goes  off  to  bed  at  eight,  and  we  get  up  at  daybreak " 

"It  looks  different  to  you,"  said  Eigou,  "but  it  comes  to 
the  same  thing  in  the  end.  Well,  my  dear,  you  come  to  me, 
and  I  will  send  Annette  here.  It  will  be  the  same  thing,  with 
a  difference " 

"Old  scoundrel,"  said  Soudry,  "you  will  make  her  blush !" 

"Eh,  gendarme !  so  you  only  want  one  horse  in  your  stable  ? 
After  all,  every  one  takes  his  luck  where  he  finds  it." 

Jeannette,  in  obedience  to  her  master's  order,  went  to  put 
out  his  clothes. 

''Tou  promised  to  marry  her  when  your  wife  dies,  I  sup- 
pose?" asked  Eigou. 

"It  is  the  only  way  at  our  age,"  said  Soudry. 


THE  PEASANTRY  295 

"If  the  girls  had  ambition,  it  would  be  a  short  cut  to  wid- 
ower's estate,"  returned  Kigou;  "more  particularly,  if  Jean- 
nette  heard  Mme.  Soudry  mention  her  way  of  soaping  the 
stairs." 

Both  husbands  grew  thoughtful  at  this.  When  Jeannette 
came  to  announce  that  all  was  in  readiness,  Soudry  took  her 
away  with  him,  with  a  "Come  and  help  me,"  which  drew 
a  smile  from  the  unfrocked  monk. 

"There  is  a  difference  after  all,"  said  he ;  "I  should  not  be 
afraid  to  leave  him  with  Annette." 

Fifteen  minutes  after,  Soudry,  dressed  in  his  best,  stepped 
into  the  basket-chaise,  and  the  pair  went  round  by  the  lake 
on  the  way  to  Ville-aux-Fayes. 

"And  how  about  yonder  chateau?"  asked  Kigou,  as  they 
caught  a  glimpse  of  the  end  of  the  manor-house.  The  stress 
which  the  old  Jacobin  gave  to  the  word  "chateau"  revealed  the 
hatred  of  the  great  chateaux  and  great  estates  which  small 
proprietors  cherish  in  their  souls. 

"Why,  I  am  sure,  I  hope  it  will  stand  for  my  lifetime,"  said 
Soudry.  "The  Comte  de  Soulanges  was  my  general;  he  has 
done  me  a  good  turn;  he  managed  my  pension  nicely,  and 
then  he  allows  Lupin  to  manage  his  estate,  and  Lupin's  father 
made  a  fortune  by  managing  it.  There  will  be  another  to 
come  after  Lupin,  and  so  long  as  there  are  Counts  of  Sou- 
langes the  place  will  be  respected. — They  are  a  good  sort,  they 
live  and  let  live " 

"Ah !  but  the  General  has  three  children,  and  perhaps  after 
his  death  they  will  not  agree.  Some  day  or  other  the  sons  and 
the  son-in-law  will  sell  the  place,  and  that  mine  of  lead  and 
old  iron  will  be  sold  to  shopkeepers,  whom  we  will  contrive 
to  squeeze." 

The  chateau  of  Soulanges  seemed  to  defy  the  unfrocked 
monk. 

"Ah!  yes,  they  used  to  build  solidly  in  those  times!"  ex- 
claimed Soudry.  "But  M.  de  Soulanges  is  economizing  at  this 
moment  so  as  to  entail  the  Soulanges  estate;  it  is  to  go  with 
the  title " 


296  THE  PEASANTRY 

"Entails  fall  through,"  said  Rigou. 

When  the  theme  was  exhausted,  the  pair  fell  to  discussing 
the  merits  of  their  respective  domestics  in  a  Burgundian  dia- 
lect, a  trifle  too  broad  to  print.  This  never-failing  topic  lasted 
them  till  they  reached  Gaubertin's  headquarters.  Even  the 
most  impatient  reader  may  perhaps  feel  sufficient  curiosity 
on  the  subject  of  Ville-aux-Fayes  to  excuse  a  brief  digression. 

It  is  an  odd-sounding  word,  but  it  is  easily  explained.  It  is 
a  corruption  of  the  Low  Latin  villa-in-fago,  the  manor  in 
the  woods.  The  name  is  sufficient  to  tell  us  that  a  forest  for- 
merly covered  the  delta  of  the  Avonne  which  flows  five  leagues 
away  into  the  Yonne.  Doubtless,  it  was  a  Frank  who  built 
a  stronghold  on  the  ridge  which  thereabouts  makes  a  detour, 
and  slopes  gradually  down  into  the  strip  of  plain  where  Le- 
clercq  the  deputy  had  bought  an  estate.  The  conqueror  made 
a  broad  and  long  moat,  and  so  entrenched  himself  in  the  delta. 
His  was  a  strong  position,  and,  for  a  feudal  lord,  an  extremely 
convenient  one  for  the  collection  of  tolls  and  pontage  on  the 
bridges  by  which  all  wayfarers  must  pass,  and  grinding  dues' 
at  the  water-mills. 

Such  is  the  history  of  the  first  beginnings  of  Ville-aux- 
Fayes.  Every  feudal  stronghold  or  religious  settlement  at- 
tracted residents  about  it,  to  form  the  nucleus  of  a  town  at  a 
later  day  when  the  place  was  in  a  position  to  create  or  de- 
velop an  industry,  or  to  attract  business.  Jean  Eouvet's 
invention  of  water-carriage  for  timber,  requiring  wharves  in 
places  suitable  for  intercepting  the  floating  piles,  was  the 
making  of  Ville-aux-Fayes,  then  a  mere  village  in  comparison 
with  Soulanges.  Ville-aux-Fayes  became  the  headquarters 
of  the  trade  in  the  timber  which  was  grown  along  both  streams 
for  a  distance  of  twelve  miles.  Workmen  flocked  to  Ville- 
aux-Fayes,  for  many  hands  were  needed  to  build  up  the  piles 
which  the  Yonne  carries  into  the  Seine,  besides  the  salvage 
and  recovery  of  "stray"  rafts.  This  working  population  sup- 
plied consumers  of  produce  and  stimulated  trade.  So  it  came 
to  pass  that  Ville-aux-Fayes,  which  numbered  scarce  six  hun- 
dred inhabitants  at  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century,  in  1790 


THE  PEASANTRY  29Y 

had  a  population  of  two  thousand,  which  had  doubled  since 
Gaubertin  came  to  the  place.  This  is  how  it  was  brought 
about. 

When  the  Legislative  Assembly  reconstituted  the  electoral 
divisions,  Ville-aux-Fayes,  on  account  of  its  geographical  po- 
sition, was  selected  as  the  seat  of  local  government,  to  the 
exclusion  of  Soulanges.  The  position  of  Ville-aux-Fayes 
marked  it  out  for  a  sub-prefecture,  and  a  sub-prefecture  en- 
tailed a  Court  of  First  Instance,  and  the  hierarchy  of  officials 
required  by  both  institutions.  With  the  increase  of  popula- 
tion in  Paris  there  began  to  be  an  increase  in  the  demand 
for  fuel,  prices  rose,  and  Ville-aux-Fayes  grew  more  impor- 
tant with  the  development  of  its  trade.  Gaubertin's  second 
start  in  life  had  been  determined  by  foresight;  he  felt  sure 
that  Paris  would  grow  with  the  peace ;  and,  in  fact,  the  popu- 
lation increased  by  one-third  between  1815  and  1825. 

The  configuration  of  Ville-aux-Fayes  is  determined  by  the 
lie  of  the  land.  Wharves  line  either  side  of  the  promontory. 
Above  the  town  and  below  the  hillside  covered  with  the  Forest 
of  Soulanges,  a  bar  has  been  made  across  the  river  to  stop 
the  floating  timber ;  and  here  the  outskirts  of  Ville-aux-Fayes 
begin.  The  lower  town  lies  in  the  broadest  part  of  the  delta, 
along  the  brink  of  a  sheet  of  water — a  lake  formed  by  the 
Avonne ;  but  the  upper  town,  consisting  of  some  five  hundred 
houses  and  gardens,  is  built  on  the  higher  ground  which  sur- 
rounds the  promontory  on  three  sides.  This  elevation,  which 
was  cleared  of  forest  three  centuries  ago,  looks  down  on  the 
ever-changing  picture  of  the  Avonne  lake,  a  sparkling  surface 
covered  with  rafts  built  of  timber  taken  from  the  great  piles 
on  the  wharves  at  the  water's  edge.  The  streams  loaded  with 
floating  wood,  the  picturesque  waterfalls  on  the  Avonne, 
which  flows  down  from  a  higher  level  into  the  river,  turning 
mill-wheels,  and  furnishing  water-power  to  several  factories 
on  its  way,  all  combine  to  form  a  busy  scene,  which  is  the 
more  unusual  on  account  of  its  background  of  green  masses 
of  forest;  while  the  distant  view  up  the  valley-  of  the  Aigues 
stands  out  in  glorious  contrast  to  the  sombre  setting  of  the 
forest-clad  hillsides  above  the  town  of  Ville-aux-Fayes. 


298  THE  PEASANTRY 

On  the  side  of  the  valley  opposite  this  vast  curtain  of  trees 
the  king's  highway  crosses  the  river  by  a  bridge,  and  pursues 
its  course  till  it  reaches  a  row  of  poplars  within  a  quarter 
of  a  league  of  Ville-aux-Fayes,  where  a  little  hamlet  lies 
about  a  post-station  situated  there  on  a  large  farm.  The 
cross-road  from  Soulanges  likewise  curves  away  round  to  the 
bridge,  where  it  joins  the  king's  highway. 

Gaubertin  had  built  himself  a  house  in  the  delta,  with  a 
view  of  making  such  a  place  that  the  lower  town  should  be  as 
handsome  as  the  upper.  It  was  a  modern  stone  house,  a  single 
story  high,  with  attics  in  the  slate-covered  roof,  and  the  usual 
cast-iron  balconies,  Venetian  blinds,  much-painted  window- 
sashes,  and  no  ornament  save  a  fretwork  under  the  cornice. 
There  was  a  spacious  courtyard  attached  to  the  house,  and 
an  "English  garden"  at  the  back,  on  the  brink  of  the  Avonne. 
The  sub-prefecture  could  not  be  allowed  to  fall  short  of  such 
elegance;  and  at  the  instance  of  the  deputies,  Messieurs 
Leclercq  and  Konquerolles,  it  was  transferred  from  its 
wretched  temporary  quarters  to  a  brand  new  mansion  built 
opposite  Gaubertin's  house.  There  also  the  townhall  was 
built,  and  quite  recently  a  Palais  de  Justice  had  been  erected 
for  the  houseless  Court  of  First  Instance ;  in  fact,  Ville-aux- 
Fayes  owed  a  whole  series  of  imposing  modern  edifices  to  the 
spirited  example  set  by  its  mayor.  A  police-station  completed 
the  outline  of  the  market-square. 

These  changes,  of  which  the  inhabitants  were  not  a  little 
proud,  were  due  to  Gaubertin's  influence.  And  he,  but  a 
few  days  before,  had  received  the  Cross  of  the  Legion  of 
Honor  on  the  occasion  of  the  approaching  Birthday.  In  a 
mushroom  town  thus  constituted  there  is  an  aristocracy  and 
no  old  noblesse;  and  the  citizens,  proud  of  their  independence, 
took  up  the  quarrel  of  the  peasants  against  a  Count  of  the 
Empire  who  had  gone  over  to  the  Bourbons.  To  their  think- 
ing, the  real  oppressors  were  the  oppressed.  The  attitude  of 
the  trading  town  was  so  well  known  at  the  Home  Office,  that 
the  sub-prefect  had  been  specially  chosen;  he  was  a  concil- 
iatory spirit,  educated  by  his  uncle  the  famous  des  Lupeaulx ; 


THE  PEASANTRY  299 

a  man  of  compromises,  familiar  with  the  expedients  by  which 
men  are  governed,  the  sort  of  man  who  is  dubbed  a  time- 
server  by  puritanical  politicians  capable  themselves  of  doing 
worse. 

Gaubertin's  house  was  adorned  within  with  all  the  tasteless 
inventions  of  modern  luxury.  In  the  dining-room  you  beheld 
expensive  paper-hangings  with  gilt  borders,  bronze  chande- 
liers, mahogany  furniture,  chairs  covered  with  crimson 
leather,  astral  lamps,  round  tables  with  marble  tops,  a  white 
gilt-edged  porcelain  dessert  service,  and  colored  lithographs ; 
the  drawing-room  was  upholstered  in  blue  cashmere;  the 
whole  house  looked  dreary  and  commonplace  to  the  last  de- 
gree; but  at  Ville-aux-Fayes  it  was  looked  upon  as  the  last 
extreme  of  the  luxury  of  a  Sardanapalus.  Mme.  Gaubertin 
played  the  part  of  a  lady  of  fashion  with  great  effect;  she 
adopted  sundry  small  affectations,  and  minced  and  simpered 
at  forty-five  in  her  quality  of  mayoress  who  has  an  established 
position  and  a  little  court  of  her  own. 

Do  not  the  three  houses  belonging  respectively  to  Kigou, 
Soudry,  and  Gaubertin  reflect  the  country  village,  the  little 
town,  and  the  sub-prefecture  to  perfection  for  those  who  know 
France  ? 

Gaubertin  was  neither  a  clever  man  nor  a  man  of  talent, 
but  to  all  appearance  he  possessed  both  talent  and  cleverness. 
He  owed  the  unfailing  justice  of  his  forecasts,  like  his  cun- 
ning, to  an  excessive  greed  of  gain.  He  coveted  fortune,  not 
for  his  wife's  sake,  not  for  his  two  daughters,  .not  for  his  son, 
nor  for  himself,  nor  yet  for  family  considerations  and  the 
consequence  which  money  brings;  even  when  the  quickening 
impulse  of  vengeance  was  set  aside,  he  loved  money-getting; 
he  loved  the  game  for  its  own  sake,  like  Fucingen  the  banker, 
of  whom  it  was  said  that  he  was  always  fingering  the  gold 
in  both  pockets  at  once. 

The  round  of  business  was  this  man's  whole  life ;  and  now 
that  he  was  full  to  repletion,  he  worked  as  hard  as  though  he 
wanted  daily  bfead.  All  the  schemes,  and  trickery,  and  crafts 
of  business  as  a  fine  art,  all  the  clever  strokes  to  be  made, 

VOL.  10—45 


300  THE  PEASANTRY 

statements  of  accounts  and  receipts,  all  the  clash  of  conflict- 
ing interests  put  Gaubertin  in  spirits,  they  set  the  blood  in 
circulation,  and  distributed  the  bile  equally  over  his  system. 
He  came  and  went,  rode  and  drove,  and  went  by  boat,  and  at- 
tended sales  and  auctions  in  Paris;  nothing  escaped  his  at- 
tention, and  he  held  countless  threads  in  his  hands  without 
confusion. 

Gaubertin  was  quick  and  decided  in  his  movements  and 
ideas;  short,  small,  and  compact,  with  his  sharply  cut  nose, 
bright  eyes,  and  .erect  ears;  there  was  a  suggestion  of  the 
hunting-dog  about  him.  The  perfectly  round  and  sunburned 
face,  from  which  the  brown  ears  stood  out  (for  he  habitually 
wore  a  cap),  was  in  perfect  agreement  with  his  character. 
His  nose  turned  up  at  the  end ;  the  hard  lips  looked  as  though 
they  could  never  unclose  to  speak  a  kindly  word.  A  pair  of 
eleek,  bushy,  black  whiskers  under  the  high-colored  cheek- 
bones disappeared  in  his  stock.  His  frizzled  iron-gray  hair 
arranged  itself  naturally  in  a  succession  of  rolls  like  an  old- 
fashioned  magistrate's  wig;  it  looked  as  though  it  had  been 
crimped  by  the  scorching  heat  of  the  fire  which  burned  within 
that  dark  head,  and  flashed  in  sparks  from  the  little  gray 
eyes.  The  wrinkles  circling  their  rims  were  doubtless  caused 
by  screwing  them  up  to  gaze  across  country  in  full  sunlight, 
a  characteristic  which  completed  his  face.  In  person  he  was 
spare,  muscular,  and  slight ;  he  had  the  claw-like  horny  hands 
covered  with  hair  peculiar  to  those  who  take  a  practical  part 
in  their  work.  His  manner  usually  pleased  those  who  dealt 
with  him,  for  he  could  assume  a  deceptive  gaiety;  he  could 
talk  a  great  deal  without  saying  anything  which  he  did  not 
intend  to  say ;  and  he  wrote  but  little,  so  that  he  might  deny 
anything  not  in  his  favor  which  might  escape  him  at  una- 
wares. He  had  an  honest  cashier  to  keep  his  books;  men  of 
Gaubertin's  stamp  can  always  unearth  an  honest  subordinate, 
and  in  their  own  interests  they  make  of  him  their  first  dupe. 

When  Eigou's  little  basket-chaise  appeared  towards  eight 
o'clock  in  the  poplar  avenue  by  the  post-house  near  the  bridge, 
Gaubertin  in  cap,  jacket,  and  boots  was  already  returning 


THE  PEASANTRY  301 

from  his  wharves.  He  quickened  his  pace  at  the  sight  of  the 
chaise,  for  he  rightly  guessed  that  Rigou  would  only  put  him- 
self out  for  "the  big  business." 

"Good-day,  Daddy  Nab ;  good-day,  stomach  full  of  gall  and 
wisdom,"  said  he,  tapping  either  visitor  on  the  chest.  "We 
are  going  to  talk  business,  and  we  will  talk  glass  in  hand,  by 
George,  that  is  the  way  to  do  it." 

"You  ought  to  grow  fat  at  that  trade,"  said  Rigou. 

"I  am  working  too  hard ;  I  do  not  keep  indoors  like  the  rest 
of  you,  who  have  the  bad  habit  of  staying  at  home  like  an  old 
pensioner.  Oh !  you  are  well  off,  upon  my  word,  you  can  do 
business  in  an  easy-chair,  sit  at  the  table  with  your  back  to  the 
fire — business  comes  to  find  you.  Just  come  in,  the  house  is 
yours,  by  George,  so  long  as  you  stop  in  it." 

A  man  in  a  blue  livery,  faced  with  red,  came  to  take  the 
horse  away  to  the  stables  in  the  yard. 

Gaubertin  left  his  guests  in  the  garden  for  a  moment,  while 
he  gave  orders  concerning  breakfast.  Then  he  came  out  to 
them. 

"Well,  my  little  wolves,"  he  said,  rubbing  his  hands,  "the 
gendarmerie  of  Soulanges  were  on  their  way  to  Conches  at 
daybreak  this  morning;  they  are  about  to  arrest  the  wood- 
stealers,  no  doubt.  They  are  in  a  hurry,  by  George,  they  are !" 
(He  looked  at  his  watch.)  "By  this  time  those  fellows  ought 
to  be  formally  and  duly  arrested." 

"Probably  they  are,"  said  Rigou. 

"Well,  what  do  people  say  in  the  village,  have  they  made 
up  their  minds  ?" 

"What  should  they  make  up  their  minds  to  do?"  demanded 
Rigou.  "This  is  no  concern  of  ours,"  he  added,  giving  Soudry 
a  look. 

"How  is  it  no  concern  of  yours  ?  If  our  concerted  measures 
force  them  to  sell  the  Aigues,  who  will  make  five  or  six 
hundred  thousand  francs  by  it?  Shall  I,  all  by  myself?  I 
cannot  fork  out  two  millions,  my  purse  is  not  long  enough. 
I  have  three  children  to  set  up  in  life,  and  a  wife  who  will 
not  listen  to  reason  on  the  score  of  expense.  I  want,  and  must 


302  THE  PEASANTRY 

have  partners.  Daddy  Nab  has  the  money  ready,  has  he  not  ? 
He  has  not  a  single  mortgage  which  will  not  have  expired; 
he  has  bonds  for  which  I  am  answerable  now  for  his  money. 
I  put  myself  down  for  eight  hundred  thousand  francs,  and 
my  son  the  judge  for  two  hundred  thousand ;  we  are  counting 
on  Daddy  Nab  for  another  two  hundred  thousand.  How 
much  do  you  mean  to  put  in,  reverend  father  ?" 

"The  rest,"  said  Eigou  coolly. 

"The  deuce !  I  should  like  to  have  my  hand  where  you  have 
your  heart !  And  what  are  you  going  to  do  ?" 

"Why,  I  shall  do  as  you  do.    Tell  us  your  plan." 

"My  own  plan,"  said  Gaubertin,  "is  to  take  double  quantity, 
so  as  to  sell  half  to  those  in  Conches,  Cerneux,  and  Blangy 
who  want  land.  Soudry  will  have  customers  at  Soulanges, 
and  you  have  yours  here.  That  is  not  the  difficulty.  How 
shall  we  arrange  among  ourselves  ?  How  shall  we  divide  the 
big  lots?" 

"Dear  me,"  said  Eigou,  "nothing  more  simple.  Each  will 
take  what  suits  him  best.  I,  in  the  first  place,  shall  give  no- 
body any  trouble.  I  will  take  the  woods  with  my  son-in-law 
and  Soudry.  There  has  been  so  much  damage  done  in  them 
that  they  will  not  tempt  you.  We  will  leave  you  the  rest  for 
your  share,  faith !  you  will  have  your  money's  worth." 

"Will  you  sign  an  agreement  to  that  effect  ?"  asked  Soudry. 

"The  agreement  would  be  worth  nothing,"  Gaubertin  an- 
swered. "Besides,  you  see  that  I  am  acting  on  the  square; 
I  am  trusting  implicitly  to  Eigou,  for  the  purchase  will  be 
made  in  his  name." 

"That  is  good  enough  for  me,"  said  Eigou. 

"I  make  one  stipulation ;  I  am  to  have  the  hunting-  lodge 
and  the  outbuildings  and  fifty  acres  round  about  it.  I  will 
pay  you  for  the  land.  I  shall  make  the  lodge  into  a  country- 
house;  it  will  be  near  my  woods.  Mme.  Gaubertin — Mme. 
Isaure,  as  she  chooses  to  be  called — will  make  her  'villa*  of 
it,  she  says." 

"I  have  no  objection,"  said  Eigou. 

Gaubertin  looked  round  on  all  sides;  and  having  made 


THE  PEASANTRY  303 

quite  certain  that  by  no  possibility  could  any  one  overhear 
them,  he  continued  "Eh !  now,  between  ourselves,  do  you 
think  they  are  likely  to  play  us  some  scurvy  trick?" 

"For  instance?"  asked  Eigou,  who  was  determined  not  to 
understand  till  Gaubertin  should  speak  out. 

"Why,  suppose  that  one  of  the  wildest  of  the  lot,  and  a 
handy  man  with  a  gun  into  the  bargain,  should  send  a  bullet 
whistling  about  the  Count's  ears — just  by  way  of  bluster?" 

"The  Count  is  the  man  to  run  up  and  collar  him." 

"Michaud  then  ? " 

"Michaud  would  keep  it  quiet ;  he  would  bide  his  time,  and 
play  the  spy,  and  find  out  the  man  at  last  and  those  who  had 
set  him  on." 

"You  are  right,"  said  Gaubertin.  "Thirty  of  them  ought 
to  rise  at  once.  Some  of  them  would  be  sent  to  the  hulks. 
.  .  .  After  all,  they  would  pick  out  the  scamps,  and  we 
would  rather  be  rid  of  them  when  they  have  served  our  turn. 
We  have  two  or  three  good-for-nothings  yonder — the  Ton- 
sards  and  Bonnebault,  for  instance " 

"Tonsard  might  do  some  queer  stroke  of  work,"  said 
Soudry ;  "I  know  him.  .  .  .  We  will  egg  him  on  further 
through  Vaudoyer  and  Courtecuisse." 

"I  have  Courtecuisse,"  said  Eigou. 

"And  I  have  Vaudoyer  in  the  hollow  of  my  hand." 

"Let  us  be  cautious !"  said  Eigou.  "Caution,  above  all 
things !" 

"Come,  your  reverence,  can  it  be  that  you  imagine  that 
there  is  any  harm  in  talking  about  things  that  are  going  on 
about  us  ?  Is  it  we  who  are  taking  out  warrants,  locking  peo- 
ple up,  stealing  wood,  and  gleaning?  If  the  Count  goes  the 
right  way  to  work,  if  he  arranges  with  some  farmer-general 
to  exploit  the  Aigues,  it  will  be  good-bye  to  the  baskets,  the 
vintage  is  over.  And  you  will  lose  more  by  it  than  I.  ... 
What  we  say  is  said  between  ourselves,  and  for  our  own 
benefit,  for  I  certainly  shall  not  say  a  word  to  Vaudoyer 
which  I  could  not  repeat  before  God  and  men.  .  .  .  But 
there  is  no  harm  in  looking  forward  and  profiting  by  events 


304  THE  PEASANTRY 

as  they  arise.  The  peasants  hereabouts  are  a  hotheaded  race ; 
the  General's  regulations  and  Michaud's  severity  and  perse- 
cutions have  driven  them  to  the  end  of  their  patience.  To- 
day they  have  made  a  mess  of  the  business,  and  I  will  wager 
that  there  has  been  a  scuffle  with  the  gendarmerie. — Let  us 
have  breakfast." 

Mme.  Gaubertin  came  out  into  the  garden  to  find  her 
guests.  She  was  a  somewhat  pale-faced  woman,  with  long 
ringlets  drooping  on  either  side  of  her  face.  She  played  the 
passionate-virtuous  role,  the  woman  who  has  never  known 
love.  She  cultivated  Platonic  affection  with  the  officials,  and 
had  for  cavaliere  servente  the  public  prosecutor,  her  patito, 
as  she  called  him.  Mme.  Gaubertin  was  addicted  to  caps  with 
top-knots  (though  preferably  she  wore  nothing  to  hide  her 
hair),  and  overdid  blue  and  pale  rose-color.  She  danced. 
At  forty-five  she  had  all  the  affectations  of  a  young  miss,  in 
spite  of  large  feet  and  alarming  hands.  She  desired  to  be 
called  Isaure,  for  amid  her  many  oddities  and  absurdities 
she  had  the  good  taste  to  consider  that  the  name  of  Gaubertin 
was  unpresentable.  Her  eyes  were  pale,  her  hair  of  some  un- 
decided tint  resembling  dingy  nankeen;  and,  let  it  be  added, 
a  goodly  number  of  young  ladies  took  her  for  their  model, 
stabbed  the  sky  with  their  eyes,  and  posed  as  angels. 

"Well,  gentlemen,"  she  said,  as  she  greeted  them,  "I  have 
strange  news  for  you.  The  gendarmes  have  come  back " 

"Have  they  brought  any  prisoners  ?" 

"None  whatever!  The  General  asked  for  their  pardon  in 
advance — and  it  was  granted  in  honor  of  the  happy  anni- 
versary of  the  accession  of  our  King." 

The  three  associates  stared  at  each  other. 

"That  big  Cuirassier  is  cleverer  than  I  thought  him,"  said 
Gaubertin.  "Let  us  sit  down  to  table;  we  need  consolation 
after  this.  After  all,  the  game  is  not  lost,  it  is  only  drawn 
out.  It  lies  with  you  now,  Rigou." 

Soudry  and  Eigou  went  home  again  out  of  spirits.  None 
of  them  could  think  of  any  expedient  for  bringing  about  a 
catastrophe  for  their  own  advantage,  so  they  trusted,  as  Gau- 
bertin had  suggested,  that  something  might  turn  up. 


THE  PEASANTRY  305 

There  were  certain  Jacobins,  in  the  early  days  of  the  Revo- 
lution, who  were  furious  when  the  clemency  of  Louis  XVI. 
defeated  their  purposes,  and  deliberately  provoked  the 
severity  of  the  Court  that  they  might  find  an  excuse  for 
bringing  about  the  anarchy  which  meant  both  power  and  for- 
tune for  them.  In  the  same  manner,  the  Comte  de  Mont- 
cornet's  formidable  enemies  put  their  last  hope  in  the  future 
rigorous  methods  of  Michaud  and  the  keepers.  Gaubertin 
promised  his  support  in  general  terms ;  he  had  no  wish  that  his 
understanding  with  Sibilet  should  be  known.  Nothing  can 
equal  the  discretion  of  a  man  of  Gaubertin's  stamp,  unless, 
indeed,  it  is  the  discretion  of  an  ex-gendarme  or  an  unfrocked 
monk.  In  the  hands  of  three  such  men,  each  steeped  to  the 
lips  in  cupidity  and  hatred,  the  plot  could  only  end  well,  or, 
more  properly  speaking,  ill. 


HOW  A  VICTORY  WAS  WON  WITHOUT  A  BLOW 

MME.  MICHAUD'S  fears  had  come  of  the  second-sight  of  pas- 
sionate love.  When  a  soul  finds  its  all-in-all  in  another  soul, 
it  comprehends  in  the  end  the  whole  world  in  which  that 
other  dwells,  and  sees  clearly  in  that  atmosphere.  Love 
brings  to  a  woman  the  presentiments  which,  at  a  later  day, 
become  the  second-sight  of  motherhood.  While  the  poor 
young  wife  fell  into  the  habit  of  listening  to  the  confused 
voices  which  reach  us  across  the  mysterious  tracts  of  space, 
a  scene  in  which  her  husband's  life  was  actually  threatened 
took  place  at  the  Grand-I-Vert. 

Those  who  had  been  first  astir  that  morning,  before  five 
o'clock,  had  seen  the  Soulanges  gendarmerie  go  by  on  the 
way  to  Conches.  The  news  spread  quickly;  and  those  inter- 
ested were  astonished  to  learn  from  the  people  who  lived  on 
the  higher  road  that  a  detachment  of  gendarmerie,  under  the 
Lieutenant  of  Ville-aux-Fayes,  had  gone  through  the  Forest 


306  THE  PEASANTRY 

of  the  Aigues.  It  happened  to  be  a  Monday,  which  in  itself 
was  a  sufficient  reason  why  the  laborers  should  go  to  the  wine- 
shop, and  it  was  likewise  the  eve  of  the  anniversary  of  the 
return  of  the  Bourbons;  not  that  those  who  frequented  that 
den  of  thieves,  the  Grand-I-Vert,  required  that  "august 
cause"  (as  it  used  to  be  called)  to  justify  their  presence  in  the 
tavern,  though  they  would  have  urged  the  plea  loudly  enough 
if  they  had  seen  the  shadow  of  an  official  of  any  sort  or  de- 
scription. 

The  Tonsards,  with  Godain,  who  was  in  a  manner  one  of 
the  family,  and  Vaudoyer,  and  an  old  vinedresser  named 
Laroche,  were  all  assembled  there.  Laroche  lived  from  hand 
to  mouth;  he  was  one  of  the  Blangy  delinquents  who  had 
been  pressed  into  the  service  to  cure  the  General  of  his  taste 
for  prosecutions.  Blangy  had  likewise  furnished  three  other 
men,  twelve  women,  eight  girls,  and  five  boys ;  the  women  and 
children  had  husbands  or  parents  to  be  responsible  for  them ; 
but  all  of  them  were  paupers ;  in  fact,  they  composed  the  en- 
tire pauper  population  of  Blangy.  The  vinegrowers  did  well 
in  1823,  and  the  large  quantity  of  wine  in  1826  was  sure  to 
mean  another  good  year  for  them ;  the  General  had  employed 
a  good  deal  of  labor,  and  had  set  money  circulating  in  the 
neighboring  communes,  so  that  it  had  been  no  easy  task  to 
find  a  hundred  and  twenty  proletarians  in  Blangy,  Conches, 
and  Cerneux.  It  had,  however,  been  done.  Mothers  and 
grandmothers  who  had  not  a  sou  of  their  own,  like  Granny 
Tonsard,  had  been  put  forward.  This  Laroche,  the  old  la- 
borer, possessed  absolutely  nothing;  he  was  unlike  Tonsard, 
he  had  no  hot  and  vicious  blood  in  his  veins;  it  was  a  dumb, 
cold  hatred  that  sustained  him ;  he  worked  in  sullen  silence, 
detesting  work,  and  unable  to  live  without  it.  His  features 
were  hard,  his  expression  repellent;  his  vigor  had  not  failed 
him,  despite  his  sixty  years,  but  his  back  was  weakened  and 
bowed ;  he  saw  no  future  before  him,  he  would  have  no  bit  of 
field  to  call  his  own,  and  he  envied  those  who  had  land.  So 
he  ravaged  the  Forest  of  the  Aigues  without  mercy,  and  de- 
lighted in  doing  wanton  damage. 


THE  PEASANTRY  307 

"Shall  we  let  them  take  us  away?"  asked  Laroche. 
"After  Conches,  they  will  come  to  Blangy;  this  is  my  second 
offence,  they  will  give  me  three  months  for  it." 

"And  what  can  you  do  against  the  gendarmerie,  you  old 
sot  ?"  retorted  Vaudoyer. 

"Do?  Could  not  we  slash  their  horses'  legs  with  our 
scythes?  They  would  soon  come  down,  their  guns  are  not 
loaded,  and  when  they  found  themselves  outmatched  by  ten 
to  one,  they  would  soon  be  obliged  to  take  themselves  off. 
Suppose  that  the  three  villages  rose,  and  two  or  three  gen- 
darmes were  killed,  would  they  guillotine  everybody?  They 
would  soon  be  obliged  to  give  it  up,  as  they  did  once  before 
on  the  other  side  of  Burgundy  when  they  called  the  soldiers 
out  for  another  affair  like  this.  Bah !  the  soldiers  went,  and 
the  peasants  kept  on  cutting  wood;  they  had  done  it  for 
years  and  years,  just  as  we  have  here." 

"Life  for  life,"  said  Vaudoyer;  "it  would  be  better  to  kill 
just  one  of  them;  and  to  do  it  without  running  risks,  so  as 
to  disgust  those  arminacs  with  the  place." 

"Which  of  the  brigands?"  demanded  Laroche. 

"Michaud,"  said  Courtecuisse.  "Vaudoyer  is  right,  right 
ten  times  over.  You  will  see  that  when  a  keeper  has  been 
turned  off  into  the  dark,  it  will  not  be  so  ea"sy  to  find  others 
to  stay  in  the  sun  and  keep  a  lookout.  It  is  not  so  much 
that  they  are  there  in  the  daytime,  but  they  are  there  all 
night  as  well. — They  are  fiends,  that  they  are !" 

"Wherever  you  go,"  said  Granny  Tonsard  (and  the  old 
woman  of  seventy  showed  her  parchment  face,  pitted  with 
countless  holes,  pierced  with  two  green  slits  of  eyes,  and  gar- 
nished with  locks  of  dingy  white  hair,  which  straggled  out 
from  beneath  a  red  handkerchief),  "wherever  you  go,  you 
come  upon  them,  and  they  stop  you.  They  look  into  your 
faggot,  and  if  there  is  a  single  green  branch  in  it,  if  there 
is  so  much  as  a  miserable  hazel  switch,  they  will  take  away 
the  faggot  and  take  out  a  summons ;  they  are  as  good  as  their 
word.  Ah !  the  blackguards !  there  is  no  way  of  getting  at 
them;  and  if  they  suspect  you,  they  will  soon  make  you  undo 


308  THE  PEASANTRY 

your  faggot.  They  are  three  curs  yonder  that  are  not  worth 
two  farthings ;  if  they  were  put  out  of  the  way,  it  would  not 
ruin  France,  at  any  rate." 

"Little  Vatel  has  not  so  much  harm  in  him,"  said  her 
daughter-in-law. 

"Him!"  said  Laroche;  "he  does  his  work  like  the  rest  of 
them.  He  will  joke  right  enough  and  laugh  with  you;  but 
you  stand  none  the  better  with  him  for  that.  He  is  the  worst 
of  the  three;  like  M.  Michaud,  he  has  no  heart  for  the  poor 
people " 

"M.  Michaud  has  a  pretty  wife,  all  the  same,"  said  Mcolas 
Tonsard. 

"She  is  with  young,"  said  the  old  grandmother;  "but  if 
things  go  on  like  this,  there  will  be  a  queer  christening  when 
she  calves." 

"Oh !"  cried  Marie  Tonsard,  "it  is  impossible  to  joke  with 
any  of  those  arminacs  of  Parisians.  They  would  take  out  a 
summons  against  you  if  it  came  to  it,  and  no  more  care  about 
you  than  if  they  had  never  joked 

"So  you  have  tried  to  come  round  them,  have  you?"  said 
Courtecuisse. 

"Lord  love  you !" 

"Well,"  said  Tonsard,  looking  like  a  man  who  has  made 
up  his  mind,  "they  are  men  like  others,  we  may  get  round 
them." 

"My  word,  no,"  Marie  went  on,  following  out  her  thought, 
"they  do  not  laugh  at  all.  What  they  give  them,  I  do  not 
know;  for,  after  all,  if  that  swaggerer  at  the  hunting-lodge  is 
married,  Steingel,  and  Vatel,  and  Gaillard  are  not ;  and  there 
is  nobody  else — there  is  not  a  woman  in  the  country  who 
would  have  anything  to  say  to  them." 

"We  shall  see  directly  how  things  go  at  harvest  and  the 
vintage,"  said  Tonsard. 

"They  will  not  stop  the  gleaning,"  said  the  grandmother. 

"But  I  am  not  so  sure  of  that,"  replied  her  daughter-in- 
law.  "That  Groison  of  theirs  said  plainly  that  M.  le  Maire 
was  about  to  give  notice  that  no  one  should  glean  without  a 


THE  PEASANTRY  303 

pauper's  certificate,  and  who  will  give  them  but  he  himself, 
and  you  may  be  sure  that  he  will  not  give  many.  He  is 
going  to  forbid  us  to  go  into  the  fields  until  the  last  sheaf 
is  carted " 

"Why,  he  has  you  every  way,  that  Cuirassier,"  shouted 
Tonsard,  transported  with  rage. 

"I  only  heard  this  yesterday,"  said  his  wife;  "I  offered 
Groison  a  nip  of  brandy  to  get  news  out  of  him." 

"There  is  one  that  is  well  off!"  cried  Vaudoyer.  "They 
have  built  him  a  house,  and  found  him  a  good  wife,  he  has 
money  coming  in,  he  is  dressed  like  a  king.  I  myself  was  a 
rural  policeman  for  twenty  years,  and  I  got  nothing  by  it 
but  colds." 

"Yes,  he  is  well  off,"  said  Godain ;  "he  has  property " 

"And  we  stop  here  like  the  idiots  we  are !"  cried  Vaudoyer ; 
"let  us  go  to  Conches,  at  any  rate,  and  see  what  is  going  on 
there;  they  have  no  more  patience  than  the  rest  of  us — 

"Let  us  go,"  said  Laroche,  who  was  none  too  steady  on  his 
feet.  "If  I  do  not  put  an  end  to  one  or  two  of  them,  I  wish 
I  may  lose  my  name." 

"You!"  said  Tonsard,  "you  would  let  them  carry  off  the 
whole  commune ;  but,  for  my  own  part,  if  any  one  were  to  lay 
a  finger  on  the  old  woman,  there  is  my  gun,  and  it  would  not 
miss." 

"Well,"  said  Laroche,  turning  to  Vaudoyer,  "if  they  take 
a  single  one  from  Conches,  there  will  be  a  gendarme  stretched 
out/' 

"Daddy  Laroche  has  said  it !"  cried  Courtecuisse. 

"He  has  said  it,"  said  Vaudoyer,  "but  he  has  not  done  it, 
and  he  will  not  do  it.  What  good  would  you  get  by  it  unless 
you  happen  to  want  a  drubbing?  Life  for  life — it  would  be 
better  to  kill  Michaud." 

While  this  scene  took  place,  Catherine  Tonsard  had  been 
standing  sentinel  at  the  tavern  door,  to  warn  the  drinkers 
to  be  quiet  if  any  one  went  by.  In  spite  of  their  vinous  gait, 
they  dashed  rather  than  went  out  of  the  door,  and  in  their 
bellicose  ardor  took  the  road  which  lies  for  three-quarters  of 
a  mile  under  the  park  walls  of  the  Aigues. 


310  THE  PEASANTRY 

Conches  was  a  thoroughly  Burgundian  hamlet,  a  collec- 
tion of  squalid-looking  cottages,  built  some  of  brick  and 
some  of  clay,  along  the  highroad  which  formed  its  single 
street.  The  hamlet  looked  fairly  presentable  when  ap- 
proached from  the  opposite  side  by  the  cross-road  from  Ville- 
aux-Fayes,  for  a  little  river  flowed  between  the  highroad 
and  the  Ronquerolles  woods,  which  succeeded  to  those  of  the 
Aigues  along  the  heights,  and  the  view  was  enlivened  by  two 
or  three  houses  rather  picturesquely  grouped.  The  church 
and  parsonage  house  stood  apart,  a  principal  feature  in  the 
view  from  the  adjacent  Conches  gate  of  the  park. 

The  conspirators  from  the  Grand-I-Vert  caught  sight  of 
the  gendarmerie  through  the  trees  in  the  square  in  front  of 
the  church,  and  sped  along  with  redoubled  haste.  Even  as 
they  came  up,  three  horsemen  issued  from  the  Conches  gate 
of  the  park,  and  the  peasants  recognized  the  General,  his  ser- 
vant, and  Michaud  the  head-forester,  who  galloped  off  to- 
wards the  square.  Tonsard  and  his  party  reached  the  spot 
a  few  minutes  later. 

The  delinquents,  male  and  female,  had  made  no  sort  of 
resistance;  there  they  stood,  encircled  by  five  gendarmes  from 
Soulanges  and  fifteen  from  Ville-aux-Fayes.  The  whole  vil- 
lage had  turned  out.  The  prisoners'  children  or  mothers  and 
fathers  came  and  went,  bringing  them  such  things  as  they 
should  need  while  they  were  in  prison.  The  scene  was  curious 
enough;  the  population  were  evidently  indignant,  but  they 
scarcely  said  a  word,  like  people  who  had  made  up  their 
minds  that  the  thing  must  be.  The  women,  old  and  young, 
were  the  only  speakers.  The  children  and  the  little  girls 
were  perched  on  piles  of  logs  the  better  to  see. 

"Those  hussars  of  the  guillotine  have  chosen  their  time 
well !  They  have  come  on  a  holiday,"  the  women  were  say- 
ing. 

"So  you  let  them  take  away  your  husband  like  that,  do 
you  ?  What  will  become  of  you  during  the  next  three  months, 
the  three  best  in  the  whole  year,  when  wages  are  high?" 


THE  PEASANTEY  311 

"They  are  the  real  thieves !"  retorted  the  woman,  with  a 
menacing  glance  at  the  gendarmes. 

"What  makes  you  squint  at  us  in  that  way?"  asked  the 
quartermaster.  "You  may  be  sure  of  this,  that  if  you  indulge 
yourself  in  insults,  it  will  not  take  long  to  settle  your  busi- 
ness." 

"I  didn't  say  anything,"  the  woman  hastily  remarked,  with 
a  meek  and  piteous  countenance. 

"I  might  make  you  repent  of  some  words  that  I  overheard 
just  now." 

"Come,  children,  be  quiet,"  said  the  mayor  of  Conches,  the 
postmaster.  "The  devil !  the  men  must  do  as  they  are  told !" 

"That  is  true,  it  is  all  the  doing  of  the  master  at  the  Aigues. 
But,  patience !" 

At  that  moment  the  General  came  out  into  the  square;  his 
arrival  produced  some  murmurs,  but  he  troubled  himself  very 
little  about  them.  He  went  straight  to  the  lieutenant  of  gen- 
darmerie from  Ville-aux-Fayes ;  a  few  words  were  spoken, 
and  a  paper  handed  over,  then  the  officer  turned  to  his  men : 

"Eelease  your  prisoners,  the  General  has  obtained  their  par- 
don from  the  King." 

While  he  spoke,  General  de  Montcornet  talked  with  the 
mayor  of  Conches  in  low  tones,  and  after  a  moment  the  lat- 
ter raised  his  voice  and  addressed  the  delinquents,  who  had 
looked  to  sleep  that  night  in  prison,  and  were  all  bewildered 
at  finding  themselves  at  liberty. 

"You  must  thank  M.  le  Comte,  my  friends,"  he  said ;  "you 
owe  the  remission  of  the  penalties  to  him,  he  went  to  Paris 
to  ask  pardon  for  you,  and  obtained  it  in  honor  of  the  an- 
niversary of  the  King's  return  to  France.  ...  I  hope 
that  you  will  behave  better  in  future  towards  the  General, 
who  has  behaved  so  kindly  towards  you,  and  that  you  will 
respect  his  property  henceforth.  .  .  .  Long  live  the 
King." 

And  the  peasants  shouted,  "Long  live  the  King,"  with  en- 
thusiasm, to  avoid  shouting,  "Long  live  the  Count." 

This  scene  had  been  planned  by  the  General  in  concert 


312  THE  PEASANTRY 

with  the  prefect  and  attorney-general  with  a  deliberate  pur- 
pose. While  showing  firmness  to  stimulate  the  local  authori- 
ties and  impress  the  minds  of  the  country  people,  the  peas- 
ants were  to  be  treated  gently ;  so  delicate  did  these  crises  ap- 
pear to  be.  And,  indeed,  if  any  resistance  had  been  offered, 
the  Government  would  have  been  placed  in  a  very  awkward 
position.  As  Laroche  had  said,  it  was  impossible  to  send  a 
whole  commune  to  the  guillotine. 

The  General  had  asked  the  mayor  of  Conches,  the  lieuten- 
ant, and  the  quartermaster  to  breakfast  with  him.  The  con- 
spirators of  Blangy  stayed  in  the  tavern  at  Conches.  The 
released  offenders  were  spending  the  money  which  would 
otherwise  have  supported  them  in  prison  on  drink,  and 
naturally  the  Blangy  folk  were  asked  to  the  "wedding." 
Country  people  call  every  rejoicing  a  "wedding,"  and  they  eat 
and  drink  and  quarrel  and  fight  and  go  home  again  drunk 
and  disabled,  and  this  is  called  a  "wedding." 

The  General  took  his  guests,  not  by  the  Conches  gate, 
whence  he  had  issued,  but  by  the  forest,  in  order  to  show  them 
the  damage  that  had  been  done,  so  that  they  might  judge  of 
the  importance  of  the  question. 

At  noon,  when  Eigou  was  returning  home  to  Blangy,,  the 
Count  and  Countess  and  their  guests  were  finishing  break- 
fast in  the  splendid  room  described  in  Blondet's  letter  to 
Nathan,  the  room  on  which  Bouret's  luxurious  tastes  had  left 
its  impress. 

"It  would  be  a  great  pity  to  give  up  such  a  place,"  said 
the  lieutenant.  He  had  been  over  the  Aigues,  and  had  seen 
it  all  for  the  first  time ;  and  now,  looking  about  him  over  the 
rim  of  a  glass  of  champagne,  he  observed  the  admirable  series 
of  unclad  nymphs  who  supported  the  ceiling. 

"Wherefore  we  shall  defend  ourselves  to  the  death,"  said 
Blondet. 

The  lieutenant  gave  his  quartermaster  a  glance  which 
seemed  to  recommend  silence  to  that  officer.  "Suppose  that 
I  say  that  the  General's  enemies  are  not  all  among  the  fields," 
he  began. 


THE  PEASANTRY  313 

The  gallant  lieutenant  was  softened  by  the  splendid  break' 
fast,  the  magnificent  plate,  the  imperial  luxury  which  had 
replaced  the  luxury  of  the  opera  girl ;  and  Blondet's  wit  had 
been  as  stimulating  as  the  soldierly  bumpers  which  they  had 
drained. 

"How  is  it  that  I  have  enemies?"  asked  the  astonished 
General. 

"So  kind  as  he  is,"  added  the  Countess. 

"He  and  our  mayor,  M.  Gaubertin,  parted  in  anger,  and, 
for  the  sake  of  a  quiet  life,  he  should  be  reconciled  with 
him." 

"With  him  I"  cried  the  Count ;  "then  you  do  not  know  that 
he  was  my  steward,  and  a  dishonest  scamp  ?v 

"He  is  not  a  scamp  now,"  said  the  lieutenant;  "he  is  the 
mayor  of  Ville-aux-Fayes." 

"Our  lieutenant  is  a  clever  man,"  said  Blondet ;  "it  is  plain 
that  a  mayor  is  by  nature  honest." 

The  lieutenant,  seeing  from  the  Count's  remark  that  it 
was  impossible  to  open  his  eyes,  said  no  more  on  that  sub- 
ject. 

VI 

THE  FOREST  AND  THE  HARVEST 

THE  scene  at  Conches  had  a  good  effect;  the  Count's  faith- 
ful keepers  saw  that  no  green  wood  was  taken  out  of  the 
forest  of  the  Aigues;  but  the  forest  had  been  so  thoroughly 
exploited  by  the  peasants  for  twenty  years,  that  there  was 
nothing  but  young  growth  left,  and,  dead  wood  being  scarce, 
they  were  busy  killing  the  trees  against  the  coming  winter. 
The  means  used  were  extremely  simple,  and  could  only  be 
discovered  some  time  afterwards. 

Tonsard  sent  his  mother  into  the  forest,  the  keeper  used 
to  see  her  come  in,  and  knowing  the  way  by  which  she  would 
go  out,  would  lie  in  wait  to  inspect  her  faggot.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  he  always  found  nothing  in  it  but  sear  brush- 


314  THE  PEASANTRY 

wood,  fallen  branches,  and  withered  and  broken  boughs,  and 
Granny  Tonsard  used  to  groan  and  pity  herself  because  at  her 
age  she  had  to  go  so  far  to  pick  up  such  a  miserable  bundle  of 
sticks.  But  she  did  not  say  that  she  had  been  in  the  dense 
thickets,  where  the  saplings  grew,  grubbing  at  the  base  of  the 
young  trees,  and  stripping  off  a  ring  of  bark  close  to  the 
ground,  covering  up  her  work  with  moss  and  leaves,  and 
leaving  all  apparently  as  it  was  before.  It  was  impossible 
to  detect  this  ring-shaped  incision,  made  not  with  a  billhook, 
but  by  tearing  away  the  bark  in  such  a  manner  that  the  dam- 
age seemd  to  be  the  work  of  a  cockchafer  grub,  a  wood-gnaw- 
ing insect  pest  known  by  the  various  names  of  "the  Turk," 
the  wood-worm,  and  wood-maggot  in  different  parts  of  the 
country.  This  grub  lives  upon  bark,  lodging  itself  between 
the  bark  and  the  wood  to  gnaw  its  way  underneath.  If  the 
tree  is  large  enough,  and  the  grub  fails  to  make  the  circuit 
before  its  transformation  into  the  chrysalis  stage,  it  is  safe, 
for  so  long  as  the  bark  is  not  ringed  round,  the  tree  can 
grow.  To  show  the  intimate  connection  between  entomology^ 
agriculture,  horticulture,  and  vegetable  production  generally, 
it  is  sufficient  to  point  out  that  Latreille,  the  Comte  Dejean, 
and  Klug  of  Berlin,  Gene  of  Turin,  and  other  great  natural- 
ists have  discovered  that  nearly  all  insects  feed  on  vegetable 
growths.  There  are  twenty-seven  thousand  species  of  plant- 
eating  coleoptera  in  M.  Dejean's  published  catalogue;  and 
in  spite  of  the  eager  research  of  entomologists  of  all  coun- 
tries, there  are  still  an  enormous  number  of  species  un- 
identified in  their  triple  transformations.  Not  only  has  every 
wild  plant  its  particular  insect  pest,  but  every  vegetable  prod- 
uct, however  modified  by  human  industry,  has  its  special  in- 
sect. The  hemp  and  flax  which  clothes  human  creatures  and 
goes  to  the  making  of  ropes  to  hang  them,  after  covering 
the  backs  of  an  army,  is  transformed  into  writing-paper,  and 
those  who  read  or  write  much  are  familiar  with  the  habits  of 
the  "silver  fish/'  an  insect  marvelous  in  its  appearance  and 
genesis,  which  passes  through  its  mysterious  transformations 
in  a  ream  of  carefully  kept  white  paper.  You  behold  the 


THE  PEASANTRY  315 

creature  skip  nimbly  in  his  splendid  raiment,  glittering  like 
talc  or  spar ;  it  is  a  flying  "silver  fish." 

The  wood-maggot  is  the  despair  of  the  cultivator.  In  its 
earlier  stages  it  hides  below  ground,  safe  out  of  reach  of  ad- 
ministrative circulars;  so  that  the  authorities  can  only  order 
a  series  of  Sicilian  vespers  when  it  emerges  as  a  full-grown 
cockchafer.  If  people  knew  the  whole  extent  of  the  damage 
done  by  cockchafers  and  caterpillars,  they  would  pay  more  at- 
tention to  the  prefect's  injunctions.  Holland  all  but  per- 
ished because  the  teredo  burrowed  in  their  dykes,  and  science 
has  not  yet  discovered  the  final  transformation  of  the  teredo, 
nor  the  earlier  metamorphoses  of  the  cochineal  insect.  In 
all  probability  the  ergot  of  rye  is  a  seething  insect  population, 
though  scientific  genius  can  only  discern  slight  movement  in 
its  particles. 

So  as  the  peasants  waited  for  harvest  and  vintage  some 
fifty  old  women  imitated  the  work  of  the  cockchafer  grub  at 
the  foot  of  five  or  six  hundred  trees  which  should  never  bear 
leaves  again  and  stand  up,  dead  and  stark,  in  the  spring.  All 
the  trees  were  purposely  chosen  in  out-of-the-way  spots,  so 
that  the  peasants  might  the  better  secure  the  spoil  of  dead 
branches.  Who  told  them  the  secret?  No  one  in  so  many 
words;  but  Courtecuisse  had  complained  one  day  at  the  tav- 
ern that  an  elm-tree  in  his  garden  was  dying  at  the  top; 
there  was  something  the  matter  with  the  tree ;  and  he,  Courte- 
cuisse, suspected  that  it  was  a  wood-maggot,  he  knew  well 
what  a  wood-maggot  was,  and  he  knew  that  when  a  tree  had 
a  wood-maggot  in  it,  that  tree  was  as  good  as  dead.  Then 
he  showed  his  audience  in  the  tavern  how  the  maggot  went 
round  the  tree. 

The  old  women  did  their  work  of  destruction  as  mys- 
teriously and  as  deftly  as  pixies,  urged  on  by  the  exasperat- 
ing measures  taken  by  the  mayor  of  Blangy.  Other  mayors 
had  received  instructions  to  follow  the  example  set  them. 
The  rural  police  made  public  proclamation  that  no  one  would 
be  allowed  to  glean  in  cornfields  or  vineyards  without  a  cer- 
tificate from  the  mayor  of  each  commune;  the  prefect  sent 

VOL.    IO — '4<J 


316  THE  PEASANTRY 

down  an  example  of  the  certificate  required  to  the  sub-pre- 
fecture, and  the  sub-prefect  supplied  the  mayors  with  a  pat- 
tern copy  apiece.  The  great  landowners  of  the  district  ad- 
mired Montcornet's  behavior,  and  the  prefect  said  that  if 
other  great  personages  would  do  likewise,  and  live  on  their 
estates,  the  results  would  be  of  the  happiest;  for  such  meas- 
ures as  these,  added  the  prefect,  ought  to  be  taken  all  over 
the  country;  they  should  be  uniformly  adopted  and  modified 
by  benevolence  and  such  enlightened  philanthropy  as  that 
of  General  de  Montcornet. 

And  the  General  and  the  Countess,  with  the  help  of  the 
Abbe  Brossette,  were,  in  fact,  endeavoring  to  help  the  peo- 
ple. They  had  thought  out  their  plans  carefully;  they  de- 
sired to  show  in  a  practical  and  unmistakable  fashion  that 
those  who  were  plundering  them  would  do  better  for  them- 
selves by  earning  an  honest  livelihood.  They  gave  out  hemp 
to  be  spun,  and  paid  for  the  work,  and  the  Countess  had  the 
thread  woven  into  hessian  for  kitchen  cloths,  dusters,  and 
aprons,  and  shirts  for  the  very  poor.  The  Count  undertook 
improvements,  drawing  all  his  laborers  from  the  neighboring 
communes.  The  details  were  left  to  Sibilet,  and  the  Abbe 
Brossette  informed  the  Countess  of  cases  of  poverty,  and 
brought  them  under  her  notice.  Mme.  de  Montcornet  held 
her  Assizes  of  Mercy  in  the  great  hall  above  the  steps.  It  was 
a  beautiful  vestibule,  paved  with  marble  red  and  white;  an 
ornamental  majolica  stove  stood  in  it,  and  the  long  benches 
were  covered  with  red  velvet. 

Thither  one  morning  before  the  harvest  came  old  Granny 
Tonsard  with  her  granddaughter  Catherine;  she  had  a  ter- 
rible confession  to  make  touching  the  honor  of  a  poor  but 
honest  family.  While  she  spoke,  Catherine  stood  like  a 
guilty  thing,  and  then  in  her  turn  she  told  of  her  "strait." 
Nobody  knew  of  it  but  her  grandmother,  she  said;  her 
mother  would  drive  her  out  the  house;  her  father,  a  man  of 
honor,  would  kill  her.  If  she  had  but  a  thousand  francs, 
there  was  a  poor  laborer  named  Godain  who  was  willing  to 
marry  her;  he  knew  all,  and  he  loved  her  like  a  brother.  He 


THE  PEASANTRY  317 

would  buy  a  bit  of  waste  land  and  build  a  cottage  upon  it. 
It  was  touching.  The  Countess  promised  to  set  aside  a  sum 
of  money,  the  price  of  a  sacrificed  whim,  for  a  marriage  por- 
tion. The  two  happy  marriages  of  Michaud  and  Groison 
had  encouraged  her  in  match-making ;  and  besides,  this  wed- 
ding was  to  set  a  good  example  to  the  peasants,  and  a  higher 
standard  of  conduct.  So  a  marriage  was  arranged  between 
Godain  and  Catherine  by  means  of  Mme.  de  Montcornet's 
money. 

Another  time  it  was  Granny  Bonnebault,  a  horrible  old 
woman,  who  lived  in  a  cabin  between  the  Conches  gate  and 
the  village,  who  came  with  a  load  of  hanks  of  spun  hemp. 

"The  Countess  has  worked  miracles,"  said  the  Abbe,  full 
of  hope  for  the  moral  improvement  of  these  savages.  "That 
woman  used  to  do  a  great  deal  of  damage  in  your  woods ;  but 
now,  why  should  she  go  ?  She  spins  from  morning  to  night ; 
she  is  busy,  and  earning  money." 

The  country  was  quiet.  Groison  brought  in  satisfactory  re- 
ports, the  wood-stealing  seemed  to  be  almost  at  an  end;  per- 
haps, indeed,  a  real  transformation  might  have  been  wrought, 
but  for  Gaubertin's  rancorous  greed,  but  for  the  petty  cabals 
of  the  "best  society"  of  Soulanges,  but  for  Rigou's  intrigues, 
which  fanned  the  flames  of  hate  and  crime  smouldering  in 
the  minds  of  the  peasants  of  the  valley. 

The  foresters,  however,  complained  that  they  found  many 
branches  gashed  with  the  billhook  in  the  forest;  evidently 
somebody  intended  to  find  dead  wood  for  winter  fuel.  But 
their  efforts  to  discover  those  persons  were  fruitless.  The 
Count  with  Groison's  assistance  had  given  pauper's  certificates 
to  the  thirty  or  forty  who  really  needed  them ;  but  other  com- 
munes had  been  less  particular.  The  Count  was  determined 
that  after  his  late  clemency  in  the  matter  of  the  arrests  at 
Conches,  the  regulations  as  to  the  harvest  must  be  strictly 
enforced,  for  gleaning  had  degenerated  into  robbery.  With 
the  three  farms  which  he  had  let  on  lease  he  did  not  concern 
himself;  but  he  had  half  a  dozen  smaller  farms  which 
paid  rent  in  kind  on  the  system  of  division  of  produce  be- 


318  THE  PBASANTR1 

tween  landlord  and  tenant,  and  on  these  he  meant  to  take  his 
stand.  He  had  given  notice  that  any  one  who  should  enter  a 
field  before  the  last  sheaf  had  been  carted  away  should  be 
prosecuted;  an  order  which  interested  no  other  farmer  in 
the  commune;  for  Kigou,  who  knew  the  country  well,  used 
to  let  his  arable  land  in  little  plots  and  on  short  leases  to  men 
who  reaped  their  own  crops  themselves ;  he  stipulated  that  his 
rents  should  be  paid  in  grain,  the  abuse  of  gleaning  did  not 
affect  him.  Nor  did  it  affect  the  remaining  farmers,  for 
peasant  proprietors  let  each  other  alone. 

The  Count  had  instructed  Sibilet  to  see  that  his  tenants 
cut  their  corn  in  succession,  and  to  put  all  the  harvesters  to 
work  at  once  on  the  same  farm,  so  that  it  might  be  easier  to 
keep  a  watch  upon  them.  This  plan  had  been  suggested  by 
Groison,  who  was  to  superintend  the  influx  of  gleaners  into 
every  field.  The  Count  went  in  person  with  Michaud  to  see 
it  in  operation. 

Town-dwellers  would  never  imagine  what  the  gleaning 
means  to  country  people;  indeed,  the  French  peasant's  pas- 
sion for  gleaning  is  quite  inexplicable,  for  women  will  leave 
well-paid  work  to  pick  up  stray  ears  in  the  fields.  The  corn 
gleaned  in  this  way  appears  to  have  peculiar  virtue  in  it, 
and  the  provision  thus  made  for  the  more  substantial  part 
of  their  daily  food  has  an  immense  attraction  for  them. 
Mothers  bring  toddling  children  with  their  older  girls  and 
boys;  the  most  decrepit  old  people  drag  themselves  to  the 
fields;  and,  as  might  be  expected,  those  who  are  not  really 
poor  will  feign  poverty  and  go  a-gleaning  in  r,ags. 

The  Count  and  Michaud  had  ridden  out  to  watch  the  on- 
slaught of  the  tattered  crowd  upon  the  first  field  of  the  first 
farm. 

It  was  ten  o'clock  on  a  hot  August  morning,  the  cloudless 
sky  above  was  blue  as  periwinkle  blossoms,  the  earth  was 
burning,  the  wheat  fields  blazed  like  flame,  the  sun  beat  down 
on  the  hard  soil  which  reflected  the  heat  up  in  waves  to 
scorch  the  faces  of  the  reapers  who,  with  shirts  wet  with 
perspiration,  toiled  in  silence,  only  stopping  now  and  again 


THE  PEASANTRY  319 

to  drink  from  their  round,  loaf-shaped  stone  water-hottles, 
cruses  with  two  ears,  and  a  rough  spout  stoppered  by  a  peg 
of  willow. 

At  the  edge  of  the  stubble-field,  where  the  last  sheaves  were 
being  piled  on  the  wagons,  stood  a  hundred  human  beings, 
who,  in  their  wretchedness,  surely  left  the  most  hideous  con- 
ceptions of  a  Murillo  or  a  Teniers  far  behind.  Here  were 
the  most  daring  pictures  of  beggary,  and  faces  such  as  a 
Callot,  the  poet  of  misery  in  its  most  fantastic  phases,  has 
drawn  to  the  life.  Here  were  the  limbs  of  bronze,  the  bald 
heads,  the  strangely  degraded  tints,  the  tattered  greasy  rags 
— darned,  patched,  stained,  discolored,  worn  down  to  the  bare 
threads.  Here,  in  short,  the  painter's  ideal  of  the  trappings 
of  misery  was  overtopped,  even  as  those  faces,  in  their 
anxiety,  greed,  imbecility,  idiocy,  and  savagery  surpassed  the 
immortal  creations  of  the  princes  of  color,  in  that  they  pos- 
sessed the  immortal  advantage  of  Nature  over  Art.  There 
stood  old  crones,  with  red  lashless  eyelids,  stretching  out  their 
turkey  throats  like  pointers  putting  up  a  partridge;  there 
stood  children  mute  as  sentinels  on  guard,  and  little  girls 
stamping  with  impatience  like  animals  waiting  to  be  let  out 
of  pasture;  every  characteristic  of  infancy  and  age  was  ob- 
literated by  a  common  frenzy  of  greed  in  all  faces ;  all  coveted 
their  neighbor's  goods,  which  long  abuse  had  made  their  own. 
Their  eyes  glared,  they  made  threatening  gestures,  but  none 
of  them  spoke  in  the  presence  of  the  Count,  the  policeman, 
and  the  head-forester.  The  landowner,  the  farmer,  the 
worker,  and  the  pauper  were  all  represented  there,  and  the 
social  problem  behind  the  scene  was  outlined  very  clearly, 
for  hunger  had  summoned  those  threatening  figures.  Every 
hard  feature,  every  hollow  in  their  faces  was  brought  into  re- 
lief by  the  sunlight  which  scorched  their  bare  dusty  feet; 
some  of  the  children  had  no  clothing  but  a  ragged  blouse,  and 
their  flaxen  curls  were  full  of  bits  of  wood,  straw,  and  hay, 
and  here  and  there  a  woman  held  by  the  hand  a  mere  baby 
which  could  scarcely  toddle,  to  be  put  down  presently  to  crawl 
along  the  furrows. 


320  THE  PEASANTRY 

This  dreadful  picture  was  intolerable  to  an  old  soldier  with 
a  kind  heart.  The  General  spoke  to  Midland. 

"It  hurts  me  to  see  them.  If  we  did  not  know  all  that  was 
involved  in  these  measures,  it  would  be  impossible  to  persist." 

"If  every  landowner  were  to  follow  your  example,  General, 
and  live  on  his  estate,  and  do  good  as  you  are  doing,  I  do 
not  say  that  there  would  be  no  poor,  for  we  have  the  poor 
always  with  us,  but  there  would  be  no  one  who  could  not  make 
an  honest  living." 

"The  mayors  of  Conches,  Cerneux,  and  Soulanges  have  sent 
us  their  paupers/'  said  Groison,  who  had  been  verifying  the 
certificates ;  "they  ought  not  to  do  that." 

"No,"  said  the  Count;  "but  our  paupers  will  go  to  glean 
in  their  communes;  it  is  enough  for  the  present  if  they  do 
not  help  themselves  from  the  sheaves.  We  must  take  one 
step  at  a  time,"  and  he  went  away. 

"Did  you  hear  that?"  asked  Granny  Tonsard,  turning  to 
Bonnebault's  mother.  The  Count  happening  to  raise  his 
voice  a  little  over  the  last  words,  they  reached  the  ears  of  one 
of  the  two  old  crones  who  were  posted  on  the  road  by  the  edge 
of  the  field. 

"Yes,  that  is  not  all ;  a  tooth  to-day,  an  ear  to-morrow,  if 
they  could  invent  a  sauce  for  it,  they  would  eat  us  up;  a 
calf's  liver  or  a  Christian's  would  be  all  the  same  to  them," 
said  Granny  Bonnebault. 

She  lifted  up  her  malignant  features  as  the  General  passed ; 
but  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye  a  hypocritical  expression  of 
honeyed  amiability  overspread  her  face,  and  with  an  ingra- 
tiating grin  she  made  a  deep  courtesy. 

"What !  are  you  gleaning  too,  when  my  wife  has  put  you 
in  the  way  of  earning  plenty  of  money  ?" 

"Eh !  God  keep  you  in  health,  my  dear  gentleman !  But, 
you  see,  that  lad  of  mine  eats  everything  up,  and  I  be  forced 
to  hide  away  this  little  mite  of  corn  to  have  bread  to  eat  in 
the  winter.  So  I  be  gleaning  again  for  a  bit — it  all  helps !" 

The  gleaners  made  little  that  year.  When  the  farmers  and 
crofters  knew  that  they  would  be  supported,  they  cut  their 


THE  PEASANTRY  321 

corn  carefully  and  looked  after  the  sheaves,  and  saw  that  the 
fields  were  clear,  in  such  a  sort  that  there  was,  at  any  rate, 
less  of  the  open  robbery  of  previous  harvests. 

This  year,  too,  the  gleaners  looked  in  vain  for  the  wheat 
which  always  made  a  certain  proportion  of  their  bundles; 
and  impostors  and  paupers,  who  had  forgotten  their  pardon 
at  Conches,  cherished  in  consequence  a  smothered  feeling 
of  discontent,  embittered  in  tavern  talk  by  the  Tonsards,  by 
Courtecuisse,  Bonnebault,  Laroche,  Vaudoyer,  Godain,  and 
their  following.  Matters  grew  worse  after  the  vintage,  for 
no  one  was  allowed  to  go  into  the  vineyards  until  the  grapes 
were  all  cut,  and  the  vines  had  been  very  closely  picked  over ; 
Sibilet  had  seen  to  that.  This  exasperated  the  peasants  to 
the  last  degree ;  but  when  there  is  so  great  a  gulf  set  between 
the  class  which  rises  in  menace  and  the  class  which  is  threat- 
ened, words  are  not  carried  across  it ;  deeds  are  the  only  sign 
of  the  matters  which  are  brewing,  and  the  malcontents  be- 
take themselves  to  work  underground  like  moles. 

The  fair  at  Soulanges  went  off  quietly  enough  save  for 
some  amenities  that  passed  between  the  best  society  and  the 
second-rate,  thanks  to  the  queen's  uneasy  despotism.  It  was 
intolerable  to  her  that  the  fair  Euphemie  Plissoud  should 
reign  over  the  brilliant  Lupin's  heart,  when  his  fickle  affec- 
tions should  have  been  centered  upon  herself. 

The  Count  and  Countess  had  appeared  neither  at  the  fair, 
nor  at  the  Tivoli,  and  this  was  counted  as  a  crime  by  the 
Soudrys  and  Gaubertins  and  their  adherents.  It  was  all  pride 
and  superciliousness,  so  they  said  in  Mme.  Soudry's  drawing- 
room. 

Meanwhile  the  Countess  was  filling  up  the  blank  left  by 
Emile's  absence  by  the  great  interest  which  noble  natures 
take  in  the  good  which  they  try  to  do;  and  the  Count  threw 
no  less  zeal  into  the  improvements  on  his  estate,  which  he 
intended  to  effect  a  corresponding  improvement  both  material 
and  moral  in  the  people  of  the  district.  Little  by  little, 
with  the  help  of  the  Abbe  Brossette,  Mme.  de  Montcornet 
came  to  have  an  accurate  knowledge  of  the  circumstances  of 


322  THE  PEASANTRY 

the  poor  families,  of  their  requirements  and  their  means  of 
subsistence,  and  learned  how  much  thoughtful  care  was 
needed  to  give  them  assistance  by  helping  them  to  work,  lest 
they  should  be  encouraged  in  lazy  or  idle  habits. 

The  Countess  had  placed  Genevieve  Niseron  in  a  convent, 
under  the  pretext  of  having  her  taught  to  do  needlework  suf- 
ficiently well  to  be  employed  in  her  household;  but  in  real- 
ity Genevieve  was  sent  out  of  reach  of  Nicolas  Tonsard, 
whom  Eigou  had  managed  to  exempt  from  military  service. 
The  Countess  thought,  moreover,  that  a  devout  education, 
and  the  guarded  seclusion  of  the  convent,  would  sooner  or 
later  quell  the  ardent  passions  of  a  precocious  child  whose 
fiery  Montenegrin  blood  seemed  to  her  at  times  to  threaten 
to  break  into  a  flame  which  might  consume  her  faithful 
Olympe  Michaud's  happiness. 

So  there  was  tranquillity  at  the  Aigues.  The  Count,  re- 
assured by  Michaud,  and  lulled  into  security  by  Sibilet,  con- 
gratulated himself  upon  his  firmness,  and  thanked  his  wife 
for  contributing  by  her  beneficence  to  the  great  result  of 
their  tranquillity.  As  for  the  sale  of  the  timber,  the  General 
held  the  question  over  till  he  could  return  to  Paris  and  ar- 
range in  person  with  wood  merchants.  He  had  not  the 
slightest  idea  of  the  way  in  which  the  business  was  carried  on, 
and  was  far  from  suspecting  the  extent  of  Gaubertin's  in- 
fluence along  the  Yonne,  or  that  the  mayor  of  Ville-aux- 
Fayes  supplied  the  larger  part  of  Paris  with  fuel. 


VII 

THE  GREYHOUND 

ABOUT  the  middle  of  September,  Emile  came  back  to  the 
Aigues.  He  had  gone  to  Paris  to  arrange  for  the  publication 
of  a  book,  and  now  he  meant  to  rest  and  to  think  over  the 
work  which  he  was  planning  for  the  winter.  At  the  Aigues 


THE  PEASANTRY  323 

the  wearied  journalist  disappeared,  and  Emile  Blondet  be- 
came once  more  frank,  fresh-hearted,  as  in  the  days  of  his 
early  manhood. 

<rWhat  a  beautiful  nature !"  said  the  Count  and  Countess 
when  they  spoke  of  him. 

Men  accustomed  to  knock  about  in  the  world,  to  see  the 
seamy  side  of  life,  and  to  gather  in  experience  of  all  kinds 
without  restrain,  make  an  oasis  in  their  hearts,  and  leave 
their  own  evil  tendencies  and  those  of  others  outside  it. 
Within  a  narrow  charmed  circle  they  become  saints  in  minia- 
ture; they  have  a  woman's  sensitiveness,  with  their  whole 
souls  they  strive  for  a  momentary  realization  of  their  ideal, 
and  for  the  one  soul  in  the  world  who  worships  them  they 
raise  themselves  to  angelic  heights.  Nor  are  they  playing  a 
comedy.  They  turn  the  inner  self  out  to  grass,  as  it  were; 
they  crave  to  have  the  stains  of  mud  brushed  off,  J:heir 
bruises  healed,  and  their  wounds  bound.  When  Emile 
Blondet  came  to  the  Aigues  he  left  malice  behind,  and  with 
it  most  of  his  wit,  not  an  epigram  did  he  utter,  he  was  as 
mild  as  a  lamb,  and  suavely  Platonic. 

"He  is  such  a  good  young  fellow  that  I  miss  him  when  he 
is  not  here,"  the  General  used  to  say.  "I  should  dearly  like 
him  to  make  his  fortune  and  give  up  that  Paris  life." 

Never  had  the  glorious  landscape  and  the  park  at  the 
Aigues  been  more  luxuriantly  beautiful  than  in  those  Sep- 
tember days.  In  the  earliest  autumn  weather,  when  earth  is 
weary  of  bringing  forth  her  fruits,  and  fills  the  air  in  the 
empty  fields  and  orchards  with  the  delicious  scent  of  leaves, 
the  forests  are  the  most  wonderful  sight  of  all,  for  then  they 
begin  to  take  bronze-green  hues  and  warm  ochre  tints,  to 
blend  in  the  fair  tapestry  beneath  which  they  hide,  as  if  to 
defy  the  coming  cold  of  winter. 

Earth  in  the  spring  looks  gay  and  joyous,  a  dark-haired 
maid  who  hopes  and  looks  forward ;  Earth  in  the  autumn, 
grown  melancholy  and  mild,  is  a  fair-haired  woman  who  re- 
members. The  grass  grows  golden,  the  heads  of  the  autumn 
•flowers  are  crowned  with  pale  petals,  the  white  daisies  look 


324  THE  PEASANTRY 

up  seldom  now  from  the  lawn,  and  you  see  the  purplish-green 
calices  instead.  There  is  yellow  color  everywhere.  The  trees 
cast  thinner  and  darker  shadows;  the  sun,  slanting  lower 
already,  steals  under  them  to  leave  faint  gleams  of  orange 
color,  and  long  luminous  shafts,  which  vanish  swiftly  over  the 
ground  like  the  trailing  robes  of  women  departing. 

On  the  morning  of  the  second  day  after  his  arrival,  Emile 
stood  at  the  window  of  his  room,  which  gave  upon  one 
of  the  terraces,  from  which  there  was  a  beautiful  view.  The 
Countess'  apartments  were  likewise  upon  the  terrace;  and 
faced  the  view  towards  Blangy  and  the  forests.  The  pond 
(which  nearer  Paris  would  have  been  styled  a  lake)  and  its 
long  channel  were  almost-  out  of  sight,  but  the  silver  spring 
which  rose  in  the  wood  near  the  hunting-lodge  crossed  the 
lawn  like  a  silken  ribbon  covered  with  bright  spangles  of  sand. 

Beyond  the  park  palings  lay  fields  where  cattle  were  graz- 
ing, and  little  properties,  full  of  walnut  and  apple-trees,  en- 
closed by  hedges,  stood  out  against  the  hillside,  covered  with 
the  walls  and  houses  and  cultivated  land  of  Blangy,  and 
higher  yet,  ridges  covered  with  tall  forest  trees  rose  up  step- 
wise  to  the  heights  which  framed  the  whole  picture. 

The  Countess  had  come  out  upon  the  terrace  to  see  her 
flowers,  which  filled  the  air  with  their  morning  fragrance. 
She  wore  a  loose  cambric  wrapper,  through  which  her  pretty 
shoulders  sent  a  faint  rose  flush;  a  dainty  cap  sat  piquantly 
on  her  hair,  which  strayed  rebelliously  from  beneath  it;  her 
little  foot  shone  through  the  transparent  stocking ;  and  when- 
ever the  wind  stirred,  it  fluttered  her  thin  dressing-gown, 
giving  glimpses  of  an  embroidered  cambric  petticoat  care- 
lessly fastened  over  her  corset. 

"Oh,  are  you  there  ?"  asked  she. 

"Yes " 

"What  are  you  looking  at?" 

"What  a  question  to  ask !  You  have  snatched  me  from  the 
contemplation  of  nature. — Tell  me,  Countess,  will  you  take 
a  walk  in  the  woods  this  morning  before  breakfast  ?" 


THE  PEASANTRY  325 

"What  an  idea!  You  know  that  I  hold  walks  in  abhor- 
rence." 

"We  will  only  walk  a  very  short  way.  I  will  drive  you 
in  the  tilbury,  and  Joseph  can  come  with  us  to  look  after 
it.  You  never  set  foot  in  your  forest,  and  I  notice  some- 
thing odd  in  it :  little  groups  of  trees  here  and  there  have 
turned  the  color  of  Florentine  bronze;  the  leaves  are  wither- 
ing " 

"Very  well,  I  will  dress  at  once." 

"We  should  not  start  for  two  hours !  No.  Take  a  shawl 
and  a  hat and  thick  shoes,  that  is  all  that  is  neces- 
sary." 

"'You  must  always  have  your  way I  will  come  back 

in  one  moment." 

"General,  we  are  going  out,  will  you  come  with  us  ?"  called 
Blondet,  going  away  to  waken  the  Count,  who  replied  by  the 
grunt  of  a  man  still  locked  in  morning  slumber. 

Fifteen  minutes  later  the  tilbury  was  moving  slowly  along 
one  of  the  broad  avenues  through  the  park,  followed  at  a  dis- 
tance by  a  stalwart  servant  on  horseback. 

It  was  a  true  September  morning.  Spaces  of  dark-blue 
sky  shone  in  a  cloud-dappled  heaven,  as  if  they,  and  not  the 
clouds,  were  flitting  over  the  ether  of  space.  Long  streaks  of 
ultra-marine  blue,  alternating  with  folds  of  cloud,  lay  like  ribs 
of  sand  low  down  on  the  horizon,  and  higher  up,  above  the  for- 
est, a  greenish  tint  overspread  the  sky.  Earth  lay  warm  under 
the  cloudy  covering,  like  a  woman  just  awakened.  The  forest 
scents  were  mingled  with  the  scent  of  the  ploughed  land,  a 
wild  savor  in  the  steaming  fragrance  of  the  soil.  The  bell 
was  ringing  for  the  Angelus  at  Blangy;  the  notes,  blended 
with  the  mysterious  sound  of  the  wind  in  the  woods,  made 
harmony  with  the  silence.  Here  and  there  thin  white  mists 
were  rising. 

Olympe  Michaud,  seeing  these  fair  preparations  for  the 
day,  took  it  into  her  head  to  go  out  with  her  husband,  who 
was  obliged  to  give  an  order  to  one  of  the  keepers  who  lived 
a  short  distance  away.  The  Soulanges  doctor  had  recom- 


326  TJTE  FEASAINTKY 

mended  her  to  take  walks  without  overtiring  herself,  hut  she 
was  afraid  of  the  heat  at  noon,  and  did  not  care  to  venture 
out  in  the  evening.  Michaud  went  with  her,  and  took  his 
favorite  dog,  a  mouse-colored  greyhound  spotted  with  white; 
greedy,  like  all  greyhounds,  and  full  of  faults,  like  all  animals 
who  know  they  are  loved  and  have  the  gift  of  pleasing. 

So  it  happened  that  when  the  tilbury  reached  the  hunting- 
lodge  and  the  Countess  inquired  after  Mme.  Michaud's  health, 
she  was  told  that  Olympe  had  gone  into  the  forest  with  her 
husband. 

"This  weather  inspires  the  same. thought  in  every  one,"  said 
Blondet,  turning  the  horse  into  one  of  the  six  roads  at  ran- 
dom. "By  the  by,  Joseph,  do  you  know  the  forest  ?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

And  away  they  went.  The  avenue  which  they  had  chosen 
was  one  of  the  loveliest  in  the  forest ;  after  a  little  while  it 
swerved  round,  and  became  a  narrow  winding  track.  The  sun 
shone  down  into  it  through  the  chinks  in  the  leafy  roof,  which 
closed  it  in  like  a  green  bower;  the  breeze  brought  the  scent 
of  thyme  and  lavender  and  wild  peppermint,  and  sounds  of 
dead  branches  and  leaves  falling  to  earth  with  a  rustling 
sigh;  the  drops  of  dew  scattered  over  the  leaves  and  grass 
were  shaken  and  fell  as  the  light  carriage  went  past.  The 
further  the  two  travelers  went,  the  deeper  they  penetrated 
into  the  mysterious  fantasies  of  the  forest;  into  cool  depths 
where  the  leaves  grew  in  the  damp  and  darkness,  and  the 
light  that  enters  turns  to  velvet  as  it  dies  away;  through 
clearer  spaces  of  graceful  birch-trees  gathered  about  their 
over-lord,  the  Hercules  of  the  forest,  a  hundred-year-old 
beech;  through  assemblies  of  grand  tree  trunks,  knotted, 
mossy,  pale-colored,  riven  with  deep  furrows,  tracing  gigantic 
blurred  shadows  over  the  ground.  Along  the  side  of  the  way 
they  took  grew  a  border  of  thin  grass  and  delicate  flowers. 
The  streams  had  singing  voices.  Surely  it  is  an  unspeakable 
delight  to  drive  along  forest  tracks,  slippery  with  moss,  when 
the  woman  by  your  side  clings  to  you  in  real  or  simulated 
terror  at  every  up  and  down  of  the  road.  You  feel  the  fresh 


THE  PEASANTRY  327 

warmth,  the  involuntary  or  deliberate  pressure,  of  her  arm, 
the  weight  of  a  soft  white  shoulder,  she  begins  to  smile  if  you 
tell  her  that  she  is  bringing  you  to  a  standstill,  and  the  horse 
seems  to  understand  these  interruptions,  and  looks  to  right 
and  left. 

The  Countess  grew  dreamy.  The  sight  of  the  forest  world, 
so  vigorous  in  its  effects,  so  unfamiliar  and  so  grand,  was 
new  to  her.  She  leaned  back  in  the^  tilbury  and  gave  herself 
up  to  the  pleasure  of  being  beside  Emile.  His  eyes  were  oc- 
cupied, his  heart  spoke  to  hers,  and  a  voice  within  her  gave 
response.  Emile  stole  a  glance  at  her,  and  enjoyed  her  mood 
of  meditative  dreaming.  The  ribbon-strings  of  her  hood  had 
come  unfastened,  and  given  to  the  morning  wind  the  silken 
curls  of  her  fair  hair  in  luxuriant  abandonment.  They  drove 
on  as  chance  directed,  and  in  consequence  were  confronted 
by  a  closed  gate  across  the  road.  They  had  not  the  key ;  and 
Joseph,  when  summoned,  proved  to  be  likewise  unpro- 
vided. 

"Very  well,  let  us  walk.  Joseph  shall  stay  here  with  the  til- 
bury ;  we  shall  easily  find  our  way  back." 

Simile  and  the  Countess  plunged  into  the  forest,  and 
reached  a  spot  whence  they  saw  a  little  landscape  set  in  the 
woods,  such  a  scene  as  you  often  see  in  a  great  forest.  Twenty- 
years  ago  the  charcoal-burners  had  cleared  the  space  for  their 
charcoal  kiln,  burning  everything  for  a  considerable  area 
round  about,  and  the  trees  had  not  grown  again.  But  in 
twenty  years  Nature  had  had  time  to  make  a  flower  garden 
there;  and  even  as  a  painter  will  paint  some  one  picture  for 
himself,  she  had  made  a  garden  of  her  own.  Tall  trees  grew 
round  about  that  delicious  pleasance,  their  crests  drooped  over 
it  in  a  deep  fringe,  like  a  great  canopy  above  the  couch  where 
the  goddess  reposes. 

The  charcoal-burners  had  beaten  a  path  to  the  edge  of  a 
pool  of  water,  always  clear  and  full  to  the  brim.  The  path 
still  existed,  tempting  you  to  follow  it  by  a  coquettish  bend, 
till  suddenly  it  was. rent  across,  displaying  a  sheer  surface 
of  earth,  where  myriads  of  tree  roots,  exposed  to  the  air,  grew 


328  THE  PEASANTRY 

interwoven  like  canvas  for  tapestry  work.  Short  green  turf 
surrounded  the  lonely  pool,  a  few  willows  and  an  aspen  here 
and  there  spread  a  light  veil  of  shadow  over  a  bank  of  soft 
grass,  laid  down  by  some  meditative  or  ease-loving  charcoal- 
burner.  Frogs  leap  and  tadpoles  swim  undisturbed,  moor- 
hens and  water- fowl  come  and  go,  a  hare  flies  from  your  pres- 
ence, the  delightful  bathing-place,  decked  with  the  tallest  of 
green  rushes,  is  at  your  disposal.  The  trees  above  your  head 
take  many  shapes;  here  a  trunk  raises  its  head  like  a  boa 
constrictor,  there  the  beeches  shoot  up  straight  and  tall  as 
Grecian  columns,  to  their  green  crests.  Slugs  and  snails 
promenade  in  peace,  a  tench  shows  its  nose  above  the  surface 
of  the  pool,  a  squirrel  eyes  you  curiously. 

When  fimile  and  the  Countess  sat  down  to  rest  at  last, 
some  bird  broke  the  silence  with  an  autumn  song — a  song  of 
farewell  to  which  all  the  other  birds  listened,  one  of  those 
songs  which  awaken  passionate  response  in  the  listener,  and 
appeal  to  all  the  senses. 

"How  silent  it  is !"  said  the  Countess ;  she  felt  moved,  and 
lowered  her  voice  as  if  she  feared  to  trouble  that  peace. 

They  gazed  at  the  green  patches  on  the  water,  little  worlds 
of  growing  and  living  organisms,  and  bade  each  other  see 
the  lizard  basking  in  the  sun ;  at  their  approach  it  fled,  justify- 
ing its  nickname — the  "friend  of  man."  "Which  proves  how 
well  he  knows  man !"  commented  Emile.  They  watched  the 
bolder  frogs  return  to  the  bed  of  cresses  by  the  water's  edge, 
and  show  their  eyes  sparkling  like  carbuncles.  The  sense  of 
the  simple  and  tender  mystery  of  nature  passed  little  by  little 
into  these  two  souls,  on  whom  the  artificialities  of  the  world 
had  palled,  and  steeped  them  in  a  mood  of  contemplative  emo- 
tion  when,  suddenly,  Blondet  shuddered  and  leant  to- 
wards the  Countess  to  whisper: 

"Do  you  hear  that  ?" 

"What?" 

"A  strange  souna/5 

"Just  like  these  literary  people,  who  stay  in  their  studies 
and  know  nothing  of  the  country.  That  is  a  woodpecker 


THE  PEASANTRY  329 

making  a  hole  in  a  tree.  I  will  wager  that  you  do  not  even 
know  the  most  curious  thing  about  the  woodpecker.  Every 
time  that  he  gives  a  tap  (and  he  gives  hundreds  of  taps  to 
hollow  out  an  oak  twice  as  thick  as  your  body),  he  goes 
round  to  the  back  of  it  to  see  if  he  has  pierced  a  hole  through." 

"That  noise,  dear  lecturer  on  natural  history,  was  not  made 
by  a  bird ;  there  was  that  indescribable  something  in  it  which 
reveals  a  human  intelligence  at  work." 

The  Countess  was  seized  with  a  panic  of  fear.  She  fled 
across  the  little  wild  garden,  reached  the  path  again,  and 
seemed  bent  on  flight  from  the  forest. 

"What  is  the  matter?"  cried  Blondet,  hurrying  after  her 
anxiously. 

"I  thought  that  I  saw  eyes,"  she  said,  when  they  had  gained 
one  of  the  paths  by  which  they  had  come  to  the  clearing  made 
by  the  charcoal-burners. 

Even  as  she  spoke,  they  both  heard  another  sound — the 
dying  moan  of  some  creature,  a  stifled  sound,  as  if  its  throat 
had  been  suddenly  cut.  The  Countess'  fears  were  redoubled ; 
she  fled  so  swiftly  that  Blondet  could  scarcely  keep  pace  with 
her.  On  and  on  she  fled,  like  a  will-o'-the-wisp ;  she  did  not 
hear  Emile's  cry — "It  is  a  mistake!"  Still  she  ran,  and 
Blondet,  instead  of  overtaking  her,  fell  more  and  more  be- 
hind. 

At  length  they  came  upon  Michaud  walking  with  his  wife 
on  his  arm.  Emile  was  panting,  and  the  Countess  so  much 
out  of  breath  that  it  was  some  time  before  they  could  speak 
and  explain  what  had  happened.  Michaud,  like  Blondet, 
scoffed  at  the  lady's  fears,  and  put  the  straying  pair  in  the 
way  to  find  the  tilbury.  When  they  reached  the  bar  across 
the  road,  Olympe  Michaud  called  to  the  dog. 

"Prince !  Prince !"  shouted  the  forester.  He  whistled  and 
whistled  again,  but  no  dog  appeared.  Then  Emile  mentioned 
the  mysterious  sounds  with  which  the  adventure  began. 

"My  wife  heard  the  sound,"  said  Michaud,  "and  I  laughed 
at  her." 

"Some  one  has  killed  Prince !"  cried  the  Countess.    "I  am 


330  THE  PEASANTRY 

sure  of  it  now;  they  must  have  cut  his  throat  at  a  stroke, 
for  the  sound  which  I  heard  was  the  dying  groan  of  some 
animal." 

"The  devil!"  said  Michaud;  "this  is  worth  looking  into." 

Emile  and  the  forester  left  the  two  women  with  Joseph 
and  the  horses,  and  turned  back  into  the  cleared  space.  They 
went  down  to  the  pond,  searched  among  the  knolls,  and  found 
not  a  sign  nor  a  trace  of  the  dog.  Blondet  was  the  first  to 
climb  the  bank  again;  and  noticing  a  tree  with  withered 
leaves,  he  called  Michaud's  attention  to  it,  and  determined 
to  examine  it  for  himself.  The  two  men  struck  out  a  straight 
line  through  the  forest,  avoiding  the  fallen  trunks,  dense 
holly  thickets,  and  brambles  in  their  way,  and  reached  the 
tree  in  question. 

"It  is  a  fine  elm,"  said  Michaud,  "but  there  is  a  wood- 
worm at  the  root  of  it — a  worm  has  ringed  the  bark  at  the 
foot."  He  stooped  down  and  lifted  up  the  bark:  "There, 
only  see  what  work  !" 

"There  are  a  good  many  wood-worms  in  this  forest  of 
yours,"  said  Blondet. 

As  he  spoke,  Michaud  saw  a  red  drop  a  few  paces  away, 
and  further  yet,  his  greyhound's  head.  He  heaved  a  sigh. 
"The  rascals ! — my  lady  was  right." 

Blondet  and  Michaud  went  up  to  the  body.  The  Countess 
was  right.  The  dog's  throat  had  been  cut.  Prince  had  been 
coaxed  by  a  bit  of  pickled  pork  to  prevent  him  from  barking, 
for  the  morsel  lay  half  swallowed  between  the  tongue  and  the 
palate. 

"Poor  brute,  his  weakness  caused  his  death." 

"Exactly  the  way  with  princes,"  said  Blondet. 

"Some  one  was  here  who  did  not  want  to  be  found  here, 
and  made  off,"  said  Michaud,  "so  there  is  something  seriously 
wrong.  And  yet  I  see  no  branches  broken  nor  trees  cut 
down." 

Blondet  and  the  forester  began  a  careful  investigation, 
looking  over  every  inch  of  ground  before  setting  down  their 
feet.  At  last  fimile  found  that  some  one  had  been  kneeling 


THE  PEASANTRY  831 

under  a  tree  a  few  paces  away,  the  grass  was  trodden  down 
and  bent,  and  there  were  two  hollow  dints  in  the  moss. 

"Some  one  has  been  kneeling  here,"  he  said,  "and  it  was  a 
woman,  for  a  man's  legs  would  not  have  crushed  so  much 
grass  below  the  knees ;  look  at  the  outline  of  the  petticoat." 

The  forester  scanned  the  foot  of  the  tree,  and  saw  that  a 
wood-maggot  had  begun  its  work;  but  there  was  no  trace  of 
the  grub  itself,  with  the  tough  glistening  skin,  the  brown- 
tipped  scales,  the  tail  already  something  like  that  of  the  cock- 
chafer, and  the  head  provided  with  antennae  and  two  strong 
jaws  with  which  the  insect  cuts  the  roots  of  plants. 

"Now,  my  dear  fellow,  I  can  understand  why  there  are 
such  a  quantity  of  dead  trees  in  the  forest.  I  noticed  them 
this  morning  from  the  terrace  at  the  chateau,  and  came  here 
on  purpose  to  discover  the  cause  of  that  phenomenon.  The 
worms  are  stirring,  but  it  is  your  peasants  who  creep  out  of 
the  woods." 

The  head  forester  let  fly  an  oath.  Then,  followed  by 
Blondet,  he  hurried  to  find  the  Countess,  and  begged  her  to 
take  his  wife  home.  He  himself  took  Joseph's  horse,  leaving 
the  man  to  walk  back  to  the  chateau,  and  galloped  off  to  in- 
tercept the  woman  who  had  killed  his  dog,  and  if  possible  to 
surprise  her  with  the  blood-stained  billhook  and  the  tool  with 
which  she  made  the  holes  in  the  trees.  Blondet  took  his  place 
between  Mme.  de  Montcornet  and  Olympe  Michaud,  and  told 
them  of  Prince's  end,  and  of  the  miserable  discovery  to  which 
it  had  led. 

"Oh  dear!"  cried  the  Countess,  "let  us  tell  the  General 
about  it  before  breakfast,  or  anger  may  kill  him." 

"I  will  break  the  news  to  him,"  said  Blondet. 

"They  have  killed  the  dog!"  cried  Olympe,  drying  her 
tears. 

"You  must  have  been  very  fond  of  Prince,  dear  child,  to 
shed  tears  for  a  dog  like  this,"  said  the  Countess. 

"I  look  upon  Prince's  death  simply  as  a  warning  of  trouble 
to  come ;  I  am  afraid  lest  anything  should  happen  to  my  hus- 
band." 

VOL.  10-47 


382  THE  PEASANTRY 

"How  they  have  spoiled  this  morning  for  us!"  said  the 
Countess,  with  an  adorable  little  pout. 

"How  they  are  spoiling  the  country!"  Olympe  said  sadly. 

At  the  park  gates  they  came  upon  the  General. 

"Where  can  you  have  been  ?"  asked  he. 

"You  shall  hear  directly,"  said  Blondet  mysteriously,  as  he 
helped  Mme.  Michaud  to  alight.  The  General  was  struck  by 
the  sadness  in  Olympe's  face. 

A  few  minutes  later,  Blondet  and  the  General  stood  on  the 
terrace. 

"You  have  plenty  of  moral  courage,"  said  Emile  Blondet ; 
"you  will  not  fly  into  a  passion,  will  you  ?" 

"No,"  said  the  General,  "but  out  with  it,  or  I  shall  think 
that  you  want  to  laugh  at  me." 

"Do  you  see  those  trees  with  the  dead  leaves  on  them  ?" 

"Yes." 

"And  those  others  that  are  turning  a  lighter  color  ?" 

"Yes." 

"Very  well,  those  are  so  many  dead  trees;  so  many  trees 
killed  by  the  peasants  whom  you  thought  that  you  had  won 
over  by  your  kindness;"  and  Blondet  told  the  tale  of  that 
morning's  adventures. 

The  General  grew  so  pale  that  Blondet  was  alarmed. 

"Come,"  he  cried,  "curse  and  swear,  fly  into  a  rage! — re- 
pression may  perhaps  be  even  worse  for  you  than  an  outbreak 
of  anger." 

"I  shall  go  and  smoke,"  said  the  Count,  and  off  he  went  to 
his  summer-house. 

Michaud  came  as  they  sat  at  breakfast;  he  had  found  no- 
body. The  Count  had  sent  for  Sibilet,  and  he  also  appeared. 

"Monsieur  Sibilet  and  Monsieur  Michaud,  let  it  be  known 
in  the  right  quarters  that  I  will  give  a  thousand  francs  to 
anybody  who  will  enable  me  to  detect  those  who  injure  my 
trees  at  their  work.  The  tool  with  which  they  work  must  be 
discovered,  and  the  place  where  it  was  purchased,  and — I 
have  a  plan  ready/* 


THE  PEASANTRY  333 

"Those  people  never  sell  themselves  when  a  crime  has  Been 
deliberately  committed  for  their  own  profit,"  said  Sibilet; 
"for  there  is  no  denying  that  this  diabolical  invention  has 
been  deliberately  planned ; 

"Yes.  But  a  thousand  francs  means  one  or  two  acres  of 
land." 

"We  will  try,"  said  Sibilet.  "For  fifteen  hundred  francs 
we  shall  find  a  traitor,  I  will  answer  for  it,  more  particularly 
if  we  keep  his  secret." 

"But  we  must  all,  and  I  most  of  all,  act  as  though  we 
knew  nothing  about  it,"  said  the  Count.  "It  should  rather 
be  you  who  discover  it  without  my  knowledge;  they  must 
not  know  that  I  know,  or  we  may  fall  victims  to  some  new 
combination.  More  caution  is  needed  with  these  brigands 
than  with  the  enemy  in  time  of  war." 

"Why,  this  is  the  enemy,"  said  Blondet.  Sibilet  gave  him 
a  quick  furtive  glance;  he  evidently  understood  the  remark, 
and  he  went. 

"I  do  not  like  that  Sibilet  of  yours,"  Blondet  continued, 
when  he  had  heard  the  man  go  out  of  the  house;  "he  is  not 
to  be  trusted." 

"I  have  had  no  reason  to  complain  of  him  so  far,"  said  the 
General. 

Blondet  went  to  write  some  letters.  He  had  quite  lost  the 
careless  high  spirits  of  his  first  visit,  and  looked  anxious  and 
preoccupied.  He  had  no  vague  forebodings  like  Mme. 
Michaud,  his  was  a  clear  vision  of  inevitable  troubles.  To 
himself  he  said : 

"All  this  will  come  to  a  bad  end;  and  if  the  General  does 
not  make  up  his  mind  at  once  to  retire  from  a  battlefield 
where  he  is  outnumbered,  there  will  be  many  victims.  Who 
knows  whether  he  himself  or  his  wife  will  come  out  safe  and 
sound  ?  Good  heavens !  to  think  that  she  should  be  exposed 
to  such  risks,  so  adorable,  so  devoted,  so  perfect  as  she  is. 
And  he  thinks  that  he  loves  her!  Well,  I  will  share  their 
peril,  and  if  I  cannot  save  them,  I  will  perish  with  them." 


334  THE  PEASANTRY. 

VIII 

BUSTIO  VIRTUES 

AT  nightfall  Marie  Tonsard  was  sitting  on  the  edge  of  a  cul- 
vert on  the  Soulanges  road,  waiting  for  Bonnebault,  who, 
according  to  his  usual  custom,,  had  spent  the  day  at  the  cafe. 
She  heard  him  while  he  was  yet  some  distance  away,  and 
knew  from  his  footsteps  that  he  was  drunk,  and  that  he  had 
lost  at  play,  for  he  used  to  sing  when  he  had  been  winning. 

"Is  that  you,  Bonnebault?" 

"Yes,  little  girl." 

"What  is  the  matter?" 

"I  have  lost  twenty-five  francs,  and  they  may  wring  my 
neck  twenty-five  times  before  I  shall  find  them.M 

"Well,  now,  there  is  a  way  for  us  to  make  five  hundred," 
she  said  in  his  ear. 

"Oh!  yes,  somebody  to  be  killed;  but  I  have  a  mind  to 
live " 

"Just  hold  your  tongue.  Vaudoyer  will  give  us  the  money 
if  yon  will  let  them  catch  your  mother  at  a  tree " 

"I  would  rather  kill  a  man  than  sell  my  mother.  There  is 
your  own  grandmother  Tonsard;  why  don't  you  give  her 
up?" 

"If  I  tried  it,  father  would  be  angry,  he  would  put  a  stop 
to  the  game." 

'"That  is  true.  All  the  same,  my  mother  shall  not  go  to 
prison. — Poor  old  soul !  she  finds  me  clothes  and  victual,  how, 
I  do  not  know.  Send  her  to  prison,  and  by  my  own  doing ! 
I  should  have  neither  heart  nor  bowels.  No,  no.  I  shall  tel  I 
her  this  evening  to  leave  off  barking  the  trees,  lest  some  one 
else  should  sell  her." 

"Well,  father  will  do  as  he  pleases;  I  shall  tell  him  that 
there  are  five  hundred  francs  to  be  made,  and  he  will  ask 
grandmother  whether  she  will  or  no.  They  would  never  put 


THE  PEASANTRY  335 

an  old  woman  of  seventy  in  prison;  and  if  they  do,  she  will 
be  more  comfortable  there  than  in  the  garret." 

"Five  hundred  francs! — I  will  speak  to  mother  about  it," 
said  Bonnebault.  "After  all,  if  that  arrangement  gives  me 
the  money,  I  will  let  her  have  some  of  it  to  live  upon  in 
prison.  She  can  spin  to  amuse  herself,  she  will  be  well  fed 
and  have  a  sound  roof  over  her,  and  much  less  trouble  than 
she  has  at  Conches.  Good-bye  till  to-morrow,  little  girl — I 
have  not  time  to  talk  to  you." 

Next  morning  at  five  o'clock,  as  soon  as  it  was  light, 
Bonnebault  and  his  mother  rapped  at  the  door  of  the  Orand- 
I-Vert;  old  Granny  Tonsard  was  the  only  person  out  of  bed. 

"Marie  !"  shouted  Bonnebault,  "it  is  a  bargain !" 

"Is  that  yesterday's  affair  about  the  trees?"  asked  Granny 
Tonsard.  "That  is  all  settled,  they  are  going  to  catch  me." 

"You,  indeed !  My  boy  has  M.  Eigou's  promise  for  an  acre 
of  land  for  the  money;"  and  the  two  old  women  quarreled 
as  to  which  of  them  should  be  sold  by  their  children.  The 
sound  of  the  dispute  roused  the  house;  Tonsard  and  Bonne- 
bault each  took  the  part  of  his  parent. 

"Pull  straws  for  it,"  suggested  La  Tonsard,  the  daughter- 
in-law. 

The  straws  decided  in  favor  of  the  Grand-I-Vert. 

Three  days  later,  at  daybreak,  the  gendarmes  arrested 
Granny  Tonsard  in  the  depths  of  the  forest,  and  took  her 
away  to  Ville-aux-Fayes.  She  was  caught  in  the  act  by  the 
head-forester,  the  keepers,  and  the  rural  policeman.  In  her 
possession  they  found  a  cheap  file,  with  which  she  made  an 
incision  in  the  tree,  and  a  brad-awl,  with  which  she  made  the 
ring-shaped  gash  to  imitate  the  insect's  track.  In  the  indict- 
ment it  was  stated  that  this  treacherous  operation  had  been 
perfoimed  upon  no  fewer  than  sixty  trees  within  a  radius  of 
five  hundred  paces,  and  Granny  Tonsard  was  committed  for 
trial  at  the  Assizes  at  Auxerre. 

When  Michaud  saw  the  old  crone  at  the  foot  of  the  tree, 
he  could  not  help  exclaiming : 

"These  are  the  people  on  whom  M.  le  Comte  and  Mme.  la 
Comtesse  heap  kindnesses !  My  word,  if  my  lady  would  listen 


336  THE  PEASANTRY 

to  me,  she  would  not  portion  that  Tonsard  girl,  who  is  even 
more  worthless  than  the  grandmother." 

The  old  woman  turned  her  gray  eyes  on  Michaud  with  a 
viperous  glance.  And,  in  fact,  when  the  Count  knew  the 
author  of  the  crime,  he  forbade  his  wife  to  give  anything  to 
Catherine  Tonsard. 

"And  so  much  the  better,  M.  le  Comte,"  said  Sibilet,  "for 
it  has  come  to  my  knowledge  that  Godain  bought  'that  field 
of  his  three  days  before  Catherine  came  to  speak  to  my  lady. 
The  pair  of  them  evidently  counted  on  the  effect  of  the  scene 
and  on  her  ladyship's  compassion.  Catherine  is  quite  capa- 
ble of  putting  herself  in  her  present  case  on  purpose  to  ask 
for  the  money,  for  Godain  counts  for  nothing  in  the  busi- 
ness  "  ' 

"What  people !"  said  Blondet ;  "our  black  sheep  in  Paris  are 
saints  in  comparison 

"Ah,  sir,"  Sibilet  broke  in,  "all  sorts  of  horrible  things  are 
done  from  mercenary  motives  hereabouts.  Do  you  know  who 
it  was  that  betrayed  the  Tonsard?" 

"No " 

"Her  granddaughter  Marie.  Her  sister  is  going  to  be  mar- 
ried, and  she  is  jealous,  and  so,  to  settle  herself " 

"It  is  shocking !"  said  the  Count.  "Then  would  they  com- 
mit a  murder?" 

"Yes,"  said  Sibilet,  "and  for  a  mere  nothing.  That  sort  of 
people  set  little  value  on  life ;  they  are  tired  of  continual  toil. 
Ah !  sir,  in  out-of-the-way  country  places  things  are  no  better 
than  in  Paris,  but  you  would  not  believe  it." 

"Then  be  kind  and  benevolent  to  them,"  said  the  Countess. 

On  the  evening  after  Granny  Ton  sard's  arrest,  Bonnebault 
looked  in  at  the  Grand-I-Vert,  and  found  the  whole  Tonsard 
family  in  great  jubilation. 

"Yes,  yes,"  said  he,  "you  may  rejoice !  I  have  just  heard 
from  Vaudoyer  that  the  Countess  is  going  back  on  her  prom- 
ise of  Godain's  thousand  francs.  Her  husband  will  not  allo\r 
her  to  give  the  money." 


THE  PEASANTRY  337 

"It  is  that  rascal  Michaud  who  gave  the  advice,"  said 
Tonsard;  "mother  overheard  him.  She  told  me  about  it  at 
Ville-aux-Fayes  when  I  went  over  to  take  all  her  things  and 
some  money.  Well  and  good,  let  her  keep  her  thousand 
francs;  our  five  hundred  francs  will  go  part  of  the  way 
towards  paying  for  Godain's  land,  and  we  will  have  our  re- 
venge, Godain,  you  and  I.  Aha !  so  Michaud  interferes  in  our 
little  affairs,  does  he  ?  He  will  get  more  harm  than  good  that 
way. — What  does  it  matter  to  him,  I  ask  you  ?  Did  it  happen 
in  his  woods?  And  besides,  it  was  he  that  raised  all  this 
racket.  That  is  as  true  as  'tis  that  he  found  out  the  trick 
that  day  when  mother  slit  the  dog's  gullet.  And  how  if  I  in 
my  turn  begin  to  meddle  in  matters  at  the  chateau?  How  if 
I  bring  the  General  word  that  his  wife  goes  out  walking  in 
the  woods  of  a  morning  with  a  young  man,  no  matter  for  the 
dew ;  one  had  need  to  have  warm  feet  to  do  that " 

"The  General!  the  General!"  broke  in  Courtecuisse,  "any 
one  can  do  as  they  like  with  him;  it  is  Michaud  who  puts  him 
up  to  things,  a  fussy  fellow  who  does  not  understand  his  own 
trade.  Things  went  quite  otherwise  in  my  time." 

"Ah!"  said  Tonsard,  "those  were  fine  times  for  us  all, 
Vaudoyer,  were  they  not?" 

"The  fact  is,"  replied  Vaudoyer,  "that  if  an  end  was  made 
of  Michaud,  we  should  live  in  peace." 

"That  is  enough  prattle,"  said  Tonsard;  "we  will  talk 
about  this  seriously  later  on,  by  moonlight,  out  in  the  open." 

Towards  the  end  of  October  the  Countess  went  back  to  town 
and  left  the  General  at  the  Aigues.  He  was  not  prepared  to 
follow  for  some  time  to  come,  but  she  was  unwilling  to  lose 
the  opening  of  the  opera  season  at  the  Theatre-Italien ;  and, 
moreover,  she  felt  lonely  and  dull  now  that  lilmile  had  left 
them,  for  his  society  had  helped  her  to  pass  the  time  while 
the  General  went  about  the  country  and  saw  to  his  affairs. 

Winter  set  in  in  earnest  with  November,  the  weather  was 
gray  and  gloomy,  with  spells  of  cold  thaw,  rain,  and  snow. 
Granny  Tonsard's  trial  came  on,  witnesses  must  make  the 
journey  to  Auxerre,  and  Michaud  went  to  make  his  deposi- 


338  THE  PEASANTRY 

tion.  M.  Rigou  was  seized  with  pity  for  the  old  woman,  and 
found  her  counsel,  a  barrister  who  dwelt  in  his  defence  on  the 
fact  that  all  the  witnesses  for  the  prosecution  were  interested 
parties,  while  there  were  no  witnesses  for  the  defence,  but  the 
evidence  given  by  Michaud  and  the  keepers  was  corroborated 
by  the  rural  policeman  and  two  of  the  gendarmes.  This  de- 
cided the  day,  and  Tonsard's  mother  was  sentenced  to  five 
years'  imprisonment. 

"Michaud's  evidence  did  it  all/'  the  barrister  told  Tonsard. 


IX 

THE  CATASTROPHE 

THE  Saturday  evening,  Courtecuisse,  Bonnebault,  Godain, 
Tonsard,  and  his  wife  and  daughters,  Daddy  Fourchon,  Vau- 
doyer,  and  a  few  laborers  sat  at  supper  at  the  Grand-I-Vert. 
Outside  there  was  a  dim.  moon,  and  a  frost  of  the  kind  that 
dries  the  ground.  The  first  fallen  snow  had  melted  and 
frozen,  so  that  a  man  walking  over  the  land  left  no  tell-tale 
footprints  to  put  the  pursuit  of  justice  on  his  track.  The 
hares  for  the  stew  off  which  they  were  supping  had  been 
caught  in  traps.  The  whole  party  were  laughing  and  drink- 
ing, for  it  was  the  morrow  of  Catherine  Godain's  wedding, 
and  they  were  going  to  bring  the  bride  home.  Godain's  new 
house  was  not  far  from  Courtecuisse's  little  farm ;  for  when 
Eigou  sold  an  acre  of  land,  he  took  care  to  sell  an  isolated 
plot  somewhere  on  the  edge  of  the  woods. 

Courtecuisse  and  Vaudoyer  had  come  with  their  guns  to 
escort  the  bride.  The  whole  countryside  was  sleeping;  there 
was  not  a  light  to  be  seen.  Only  the  wedding  party  were 
awake,  and  their  boisterous  mirth  was  at  its  loudest  when 
Bonnebault's  old  mother  came  in.  At  that  hour  of  night 
every  one  looked  up  in  surprise  at  her,  but  she  spoke  in  a  low 
voice  to  Tonsard  and  her  own  son. 

"It  looks  as  if  the  wife's  time  had  come,"  she  said.    "He 


THE  PEASANTRY  339 

has  just  had  his  horse  saddled ;  he  is  going  to  Soulanges  for 
Dr.  Gourdon." 

"Sit  you  down,  mother,"  said  Tonsard,  and,  resigning  his 
seat  at  the  table,  he  laid  himself  at  full  length  on  a  bench. 

As  he  did  so,  they  heard  a  horse  pass  by  at  full  gallop  along 
the  road.  Tonsard,  Courtecuisse,  and  Vaudoyer  went  at  once 
to  the  door,  and  saw  Michaud  riding  through  the  village. 

"How  well  he  understands  his  business  !"  said  Courtecuisse; 
"he  went  round  past  the  front  of  the  cblteau,  he  is  taking 
the  Blangy  road,  it  is  the  safest " 

"Yes,"  said  Tonsard,  "but  he  will  bring  Dr.  Gourdon  back 
with  him." 

"Perhaps  he  will  not  find  him  at  home,"  objected  Courte- 
cuisse; "Dr.  Gourdon  was  expected  at  Conches  for  the  post- 
mistress, who  is  putting  people  out  at  this  time  of  night." 

"Why,  then  he  will  go  by  the  highroad  from  Soulanges 
to  Conches,  that  is  the  shortest  way." 

"And  the  surest  for  us,"  said  Courtecuisse;  "there  is  a 
bright  moonlight  just  now.  There  are  no  keepers  along  the 
highroad  as  there  are  in  the  woods;  you  can  hear  anybody 
a  long  way  off;  and  from  the  lodge  gates  there,  behind  the 
hedges,  just  where  the  coppice  begins,  you  can  hit  a  man  in 
the  back,  as  if  he  were  a  rabbit,  at  five  hundred  paces " 

"It  will  be  half -past  eleven  before  he  goes  past  the  place," 
said  Tonsard.  "It  will  take  him  half  an  hour  to  reach  Sou- 
langes, and  another  half  hour  to  come  back.  .  .  .  Look 
here  though,  boys,  suppose  that  M.  Gourdon  was  on  the 
road " 

"Don't  trouble  yourself,"  said  Courtecuisse ;  "I  shall  be  ten 
minutes'  distance  away  from  you  on  the  direct  road  to  Blangy, 
on  the  Soulanges  side,  and  Vaudoyer  will  be  ten  minutes 
away  on  the  Conches  side.  If  anybody  comes  along,  a  post- 
chaise,  the  mail  coach,  or  the  gendarmes,  or  anything  what- 
ever, we  will  fire  into  the  earth,  a  smothered  shot." 

"And  if  I  miss  him  ?" 

"He  is  right,"  said  Courtecuisse. — "I  am  a  better  shot  than 
you  are ;  Vaudoyer,  I  will  go  with  you.  Bonnebault  will  take 


340  THE  PEASANTRY 

my  post ;  he  can  call  out,  a  shout  is  easier  to  hear,  and  not  so 
suspicious." 

The  three  men  went  back  into  the  tavern,  and  they  kept 
up  the  festivity ;  but  at  eleven  o'clock  Vaudoyer,  Courtecuisse, 
Tonsard,  and  Bonnebault  turned  out  with  their  guns,  none 
of  the  women  paying  any  attention  to  this.  Three-quarters 
of  an  hour  later,  moreover,  they  came  in  again,  and  sat  drink- 
ing until  one  o'clock  in  the  morning.  Catherine  and  Marie, 
with  their  mother  and  Bonnebault,  had  plied  the  rest  of  the 
party  with  drink,  until  the  miller,  the  laborers,  and  the  two 
peasants,  like  Daddy  Fourchon,  lay  snoring  on  the  floor,  when 
the  four  set  out  on  their  errand.  When  they  came  back  they 
shook  the  sleepers,  whom  they  found  as  they  left  them,  each 
in  his  place. 

While  this  orgy  went  on,  Michaud's  household  endured  the 
most  cruel  anxiety.  Olympe  had  been  taken  with  false  labor- 
pains,  and  her  husband  had  started  in  all  haste  to  summon 
the  doctor.  But  the  poor  woman's  pains  ceased  as  soon  as 
Michaud  was  out  of  the  house.  Her  mind  was  full  of  the 
possible  risks  which  her  husband  might  be  running  at  that 
late  hour  in  a  hostile  country  full  of  determined  scoundrels ; 
and  so  strong  was  her  anguish  of  soul,  that  for  the  time  being 
it  quelled  physical  suffering.  In  vain  did  her  servant  tell 
her  again  and  again  that  her  fears  were  imaginary;  she  did 
not  seem  to  understand  the  words,  and  sat  by  the  fireside 
in  her  room,  listening  to  every  sound  without.  In  an  agony 
of  terror,  which  grew  from  second,  to  second,  she  called  up 
the  man  to  give  him  an  order  which  she  did  not  give.  The 
poor  little  woman  walked  to  and  fro  in  feverish  agitation. 
She  went  to  the  windows  and  looked  out,  she  threw  them 
open  in  spite  of  the  cold,  then  she  went  downstairs,  opened 
the  door  into  the  yard,  and  looked  out  into  the  distance  and 
listened. 

"Nothing ,"  she  said,  "nothing  jet,"  and  she  went  up 

to  her  room  again  in  despair. 

About  a  quarter-past  twelve  she  cried  out,  "Here  he  is;  I 


THE  PEASANTKY  341 

hear  his  horse,"  and  went  downstairs,  followed  by  the  man, 
who  went  to  open  the  great  gate. 

"It  is.  strange,"  she  said;  "he  has  come  back  by  way  of 
Conches  and  the  forest." 

She  stood  like  one  horror-struck,  motionless  and  dumb. 
The  man  shared  her  dismay;  for  in  the  frantic  gallop  of  the 
horse,  and  the  clank  of  the  empty  stirrups,  there  had  been  a 
mysterious  sound,  which  told  of  something  wrong,  accom- 
panied by  the  significant  neighing  which  a  horse  only  gives 
when  alone.  Soon,  too  soon  for  the  unhappy  wife,  the  horse 
reached  the  park  gate,  panting  and  covered  with  foam,  but 
the  horse  was  riderless,  and  the  bridle,  which  doubtless  had 
hindered  his  flight,  was  broken.  Olympe  watched  with  hag- 
gard eyes  as  the  man  opened  the  gate,  saw  the  empty  saddle, 
and  without  a  word  turned  and  fled  to  the  chateau  like  one 
distraught.  She  reached  the  house  and  fell  beneath  the  Gen- 
eral's windows  with  the  cry : 

"Monsieur !  they  have  murdered  him !" 

Her  shriek  was  so  terrible  that  it  woke  the  Count ;  he  rang 
the  bell  and  roused  the  household.  The  moans  of  Mme.  Mi- 
chaud,  who  was  delivered  of  a  stillborn  child  as  she  lay  on 
the  earth,  brought  out  the  General  and  the  servants.  They 
raised  up  the  unhappy  dying  woman.  "They  have  killed 
him !"  she  said  when  she  saw  the  General,  and  died  with  the 
words  on  her  lips. 

"Joseph !"  the  Count  called  to  his  man,  "run  and  fetch 
the  doctor !  Perhaps  it  is  not  too  late. — No ;  you  had  better 
go  for  M.  le  Cure,  she  is  dead,  poor  woman,  and  the  child  is 
dead. — Great  heavens  !  what  a  mercy  that  my  wife  is  not  "here ! 
Go  and  see  what  has  happened,"  he  added,  turning  to  the  gar- 
dener. 

"This  has  happened,"  said  the  man  from  the  hunting-lodge, 
"M.  Michaud's  horse  has  come  back  without  him,  the  bridle 
is  cut,  there  is  blood  on  his  legs.  There  is  a  drop  of  blood 
on  the  saddle." 

"What  can  we  do  to-night?"  said  the  Count.  "Go  and  call 
up  Groison,  find  the  keepers,  saddle  the  horses,  and  we  will 
beat  up  the  country." 


342  THE  PEASANTRY 

In  the  gray  light  of  the  morning,  eight  men — the  Count, 
Groison,  the  three  keepers,  and  two  gendarmes,  who  had  come 
over  from  Soulanges  with  the  quartermaster — were  out 
searching  the  country;  but  it  was  midday  before  they  found 
the  dead  body  of  the  head-forester  in  a  coppice  about  five 
hundred  paces  from  the  Conches  gate,  in  the  corner  of 
the  park  between  the  highroad  and  the  road  to  Ville-aux- 
Fayes. 

Two  gendarmes  were  dispatched — one  to  Ville-aux-Fayes 
for  the  public  prosecutor,  and  the  other  to  the  justice  of  the 
peace  at  Soulanges — and  meanwhile  the  General  drew  up  a 
report  with  the  assistance  of  the  quartermaster.  There  were 
marks  in  the  road  opposite  the  park  gates  where  the  horse  had 
swerved  and  reared,  and  deep  dints  made  by  the  hoofs  of  the 
runaway  continued  as  far  as  the  first  footpath  into  the  wood 
beyond  the  hedge.  The  animal  had  taken  the  shortest  way 
back  to  the  stable.  A  bullet  was  lodged  in  Michaud's  back, 
and  the  spine  was  broken. 

Groison  and  the  quartermaster  went  all  over  the  ground 
round  about  the  spot  where  the  horse  had  reared,  the  "scene 
of  the  murder,"  as  it  is  called  in  criminal  reports,  but  with  all 
their  sagacity  they  could  discover  no  clue.  The  ground  was 
frozen  so  hard  that  there  was  not  a  sign  of  the  footprints  of 
Michaud's  murderer,  and  a  spent  cartridge  was  the  only  thing 
which  they  found. 

When  the  public  prosecutor  arrived  with  the  examining 
magistrate  and  Dr.  Gourdon,  and  the  body  was  removed  for 
the  post-mortem  examination,  it  was  ascertained  that  the  ball, 
which  corresponded  with  the  waste  cartridge,  was  a  regulation 
bullet  discharged  from  a  rifle,  and  that  there  was  not  a  single 
rifle  in  the  commune  of  Blangy.  That  evening  at  the  chateau 
the  examining  magistrate  and  M.  Soudry,  the  public  prose- 
cutor, were  of  the  opinion  that  these  facts  should  be  put  in 
the  form  of  a  report,  and  that  they  had  better  wait.  The 
lieutenant  from  Ville-aux-Fayes  and  the  quartermaster  were 
of  the  same  mind. 

"The  shot  must  have  been  fired  by  somebody  belonging 


THE  PEASANTRY  343 

to  the  neighborhood,"  said  the  quartermaster,  "but  there  are 
two  communes  in  the  case,  and  there  are  five  or  six  men  in 
Conches  and  Blangy  who  are  quite  capable  of  the  act. — Ton- 
sard,  whom  I  should  suspect  the  most,  spent  the  night  in 
drinking.  Why,  Langlume  the  miller,  your  deputy,  General, 
was  of  the  wedding  party ;  he  was  there  the  whole  time.  They 
were  so  drunk  that  they  could  not  stand  upright,  and  they 
brought  the  bride  home  at  half-past  one,  while  it  is  evident 
from  the  return  of  Michaud's  horse  that  he  was  murdered  be- 
tween twelve  and  eleven  o'clock.  At  a  quarter-past  ten  Groi- 
son  saw  the  whole  party  at  table,  and  Michaud  went  that  way 
to  Soulanges,  and  he  was  in  Soulanges  by  eleven  o'clock.  His 
horse  swerved  and  pawed  the  ground  on  the  road  by  the  lodge 
gates,  but  Michaud  might  have  received  the  shot  before  he 
reached  Blangy,  and  have  held  on  for  some  time  afterwards. 
Warrants  must  be  issued  for  twenty  persons  at  the  least,  and 
every  one  under  suspicion  must  be  arrested ;  but  these  gentle- 
men know  the  peasants  as  well  as  I  do ;  you  may  keep  them  in 
prison  for  a  year,  and  you  will  get  nothing  out  of  them  but 
denials.  What  do  you  mean  to  do  with  the  party  in  Tonsard's 
place?" 

Langlume,  the  miller  and  deputy  mayor,  was  summoned, 
and  he  gave  his  version  of  the  evening's  events.  They  were 
all  in  the  tavern,  he  said,  no  one  left  it  except  to  go  into  the 
yard  for  a  few  minutes.  He  himself  had  gone  out  with  Ton- 
sard  about  eleven  o'clock ;  something  was  said  about  the  moon 
and  the  weather ;  they  had  heard  nothing.  He  gave  the  names 
of  all  the  party,  not  one  of  them  had  left  the  place,  and  to- 
wards two  o'clock  in  the  morning  they  had  gone  home  with 
the  newly-married  couple. 

The  General  and  the  public  prosecutor,  taking  counsel  with 
the  lieutenant  and  the  quartermaster,  determined  to  send  to 
Paris  for  a  clever  detective,  who  should  come  to  the  chateau 
as  a  workman,  and  be  turned  away  for  bad  conduct.  He 
should  drink  and  assiduously  frequent  the  Grand-I-Vert,  and 
hang  about  the  country  in  discontent  with  the  General.  It  was 
the  best  way  of  lying  in  wait  to  catch  a  chance  indiscretion. 


344  THE  PBA8ANTBT 

<CL  will  discover  poor  Midland's  murderer  in  the  end  if  I 
should  have  to  spend  twenty  thousand  francs  over  it !"  Gen- 
eral Montcornet  never  wearied  of  repeating  those  words. 

He  went  to  Paris  with  this  idea  in  his  head,  and  returned 
in  the  month  of  January  with  one  of  the  cleverest  detectives 
in  the  force,  who  came  ostensibly  as  foreman  of  the  work  at 
the  chateau,  and  took  to  poaching.  Formal  complaints  were 
made  by  the  keepers,  and  the  General  turned  him  away.  In 
February  the  Comte  <le  Montcornet  returned  to  Paris. 


THE   VICTORY  OF   THE   VANQUISHED 

ONE  evening  in  May,  when  summer  weather  had  come,  and 
the  Parisians  had  returned  to  the  Aigues,  M.  de  Troisville, 
whom  his  daughter  had  brought  with  her,  Blondet,  the  Abbe 
Brossette,  the  General,  and  the  sub-prefect  from  Ville-aux- 
Fayes,  who  had  come  on  a  visit,  were  playing  at  whist  and 
chess.  It  was  half-past  eleven  o'clock  when  Joseph  came  in 
to  tell  his  master  that  the  bad  workman  who  had  been  dis- 
missed wished  to  speak  with  him ;  the  man  said  that  the  Gen- 
eral still  owed  him  money.  He  was  very  drunk,  the  valet  re- 
ported. 

"All  right,  I  will  go  out  to  him,"  said  the  General,  and  he 
went  out  on  the  lawn  at  some  distance  from  the  house. 

"M.  le  Comte,  there  is  nothing  to  be  made  of  these  people," 
said  the  detective.  "All  that  I  can  find  out  is  simply  this — 
that  if  you  stay  here  and  persist  in  trying  to  break  the  people 
of  the  bad  habits  which  they  were  allowed  to  contract  in  Mile. 
Laguerre's  time,  the  next  shot  will  be  fired  at  you.  I  can  do 
nothing  more  here  after  this ;  they  suspect  me  even  more  than 
your  keepers." 

The  Count  paid  the  detective,  and  the  man  took  his  leave ; 
his  departure  only  confirmed  previous  suspicions  of  the  per- 
petrators of  the  crime.  When  the  General  went  back  to  join 
the  party  in  the  drawing-room,  his  face  bore  traces  of  such 


THE  PEASANTRY  845 

deep  and  keen  emotion,  that  his  wife  came  to  him  anxiously 
asking  for  news. 

"Dearest,"  he  said,  "I  do  not  want  to  frighten  you,  and 
yet  it  is  right  that  you  should  know  that  Michaud's  death  was 
meant  for  an  indirect  warning  to  us  to  quit " 

"For  my  own  part,"  said  M.  de  Troisville,  "I  should  not 
think  of  going.  I  had  these  same  difficulties  in  Normandy 
under  another  form;  I  persisted,  and  now  everything  goes 
well." 

"Normandy  and  Burgundy  are  two  different  countries,  my 
lord  Marquis,"  said  the  sub-prefect.  "The  fruit  of  the  vine  is 
more  heating  to  the  blood  than  the  fruit  of  the  apple-tree. 
We  are  not  so  learned  here  in  legal  quibbles,  and  we  are  sur- 
rounded by  forests;  we  have  as  yet  few  industries;  we  are 
savages,  in  fact.  If  I  have  any  advice  to  give  to  M.  le  Comte, 
it  is  this — to  sell  his  land  and  invest  the  money  in  the  funds. 
He  would  double  his  income,  and  he  would  not  have  the  slight- 
est trouble.  If  he  has  a  liking  for  a  country  life,  he  can  have 
an  estate  near  Paris,  a  chateau  as  fine  as  the  chateau  of  the 
Aigues,  a  park  enclosed  by  walls  which  no  one  will  climb,  and 
farms  which  he  can  let  to  tenants  who  will  come  in  a  cab- 
riolet to  pay  their  rents  with  bank-notes.  He  will  not  need  -to 
make  out  a  single  summons  in  twelve  months.  He  can  go 
and  come  in  three  or  four  hours. — And,  then,  Mme.  la  Comt- 
esse,  M.  Blondet  and  my  lord  Marquis  would  visit  you  more 
frequently " 

"Shall  /  fly  before  the  peasants,  I,  who  stood  my  ground 
on  the  Danube  ?" 

"Yes,  but  where  are  your  Cuirassiers  ?"  asked  Blondet. 

"Such  a  fine  estate " 

"It  will  fetch  more  than  two  million  of  francs  to-day." 

"The  chateau  alone  must  have  cost  as  much,"  said  M.  de 
Troisville. 

"One  of  the  finest  properties  for  twenty  leagues  round," 
said  the  sub-prefect,  "but  you  will  find  better  near  Paris." 

"What  would  two  million  francs  bring  in,  invested  ill 
the  funds  ?"  inquired  the  Countess. 


346  THE  PEASANTRY 

"At  the  present  time,  about  forty  thousand  francs,"  said 
Blondet. 

"The  Aigues  would  not  bring  you  in  more  than  thirty 
thousand,  all  told,"  said  the  Countess,  "and  then  of  late  years 
you  have  spent  an  immense  amount  upon  it,  you  have  had 
ditches  made  round  the  woods." 

"You  can  have  a  royal  chateau  just  now  on  the  outskirts  of 
Paris  for  four  hundred  thousand  francs.  You  reap  the  bene- 
fit of  other  people's  follies." 

"I  thought  that  you  were  fond  of  the  Aigues,"  the  Count 
said  to  his  wife. 

"But  do  you  not  feel  that  your  life  is  a  thousand  times  more 
to  me  than  the  Aigues?"  said  she.  "And  besides,  since  the 
death  of  poor  Olympe  and  Michaud's  murder,  the  country  has 
grown  hateful  to  me.  I  seem  to  see  threats  and  a  sinister 
expression  in  every  face." 

The  next  morning,  when  the  sub-prefect  came  into  M. 
Gaubertin's  drawing-room  at  Ville-aux-Fayes,  the  mayor 
greeted  him  with — "Well,  M.  des  Lupeaulx,  have  you  come 
from  the  Aigues  ?" 

"Yes,"  said  the  sub-prefect,  with  a  shade  of  triumph  in  his 
manner.  He  shot  a  tender  glance  at  Mile.  Elise  as  he  added, 
"I  am  afraid  that  we  are  going  to  lose  the  General;  he  is 
about  to  sell  his  estate " 

"M.  Gaubertin,  I  beg  of  you  not  to  forget  my  lodge — I  can- 
not bear  the  noise  and  dust  of  Ville-aux-Fayes  any  longer; 
like  some  poor  imprisoned  bird,  I  gasp  for  the  air  of  the 
far-off  fields  and  woods,"  drawled  Mme.  Isaure,  her  eyes  half 
closed,  her  head  thrown  back  over  her  left  shoulder,  while  she 
languidly  twisted  her  long  pale  ringlets. 

"Pray,  be  careful,  madame !"  said  Gaubertin,  lowering  his 
voice,  "your  babbling  will  not  buy  the  lodge  for  us " 

Then  he  turned  to  the  sub-prefect : 

"So  they  still  cannot  find  the  perpetrators  of  the  crime 
committed  on  the  person  of  the  head-forester?"  he  inquired. 

"It  seems  that  they  cannot,"  replied  the  sub-prefect. 

"That  will  injure  the  sale  of  the  Aigues  very  much,"  an- 


THE  PEASANTRY  34? 

nounced  Gaubertin  to  all  who  heard  him ;  "for  my  own  part, 
I  would  not  buy  the  place,  I  know.  The  peasants  are  too 
troublesome.  Even  in  Mile.  Laguerre's  time  I  used  to  have 
trouble  with  them,  though  the  Lord  knows  that  she  allowed 
them  latitude  enough." 

The  month  of  May  was  drawing  to  a  close,  and  there  was 
nothing  indicated  that  the  General  meant  to  sell  the  Aigues. 
He  was  hesitating.  One  night  about  ten  o'clock  he  was  re- 
turning from  the  forest  by  one  of  the  six  avenues  which  led 
to  the  hunting-lodge;  he  was  so  near  home  that  he  had  dis- 
missed the  keeper  who  went  with  him.  At  a  turn  in  the 
avenue  a  man  armed  with  a  rifle  came  out  from  a  bush. 

"General,"  he  said,  "this  is  the  third  time  that  I  have  had 
you  close  to  the  muzzle  of  my  gun,  and  this  makes  the  third 
time  that  I  have  given  you  your  life." 

"And  why  should  you  want  to  kill  me,  Bonnebault?"  said 
the  Count,  without  a  sign  of  flinching. 

"Faith !  if  I  did  not,  it  would  be  somebody  else ;  and,  you 
see,  I  myself  have  a  liking  for  those  who  served  under  the 
Emperor,  and  I  cannot  make  up  my  mind  to  shoot  you  like 
a  partridge.  Don't  ask  me  about  it ;  I  don't  mean  to  say  any- 
thing.— But  you  have  enemies  who  are  more  cunning  and 
stronger  than  you  are,  and  they  will  crush  you  at  last.  I  am 
to  have  three  thousand  francs  if  I  kill  you,  and  I  shall  marry 
Marie  Tonsard.  Well,  give  me  a  few  acres  of  waste  and  a 
cabin;  I  will  go  on  saying,  as  I  have  said  before,  that  I  have 
not  found  an  opportunity.  You  shall  have  time  to  sell  your 
place  and  go  away,  but  be  quick.  I  am  a  good  fellow  still, 
scapegrace  though  I  am;  somebody  else  might  do  you  a  mis- 
chief." 

"And  if  I  give  you  your  demands,"  said  the  General,  "will 
you  tell  me  who  it  was  that  promised  you  the  three  thousand 
crowns  ?" 

"I  do  not  know;  some  one  is  pushing  me  on  to  do  this, 
but  I  am  too  fond  of  that  person  to  mention  names.  .  .  . 

And  if  I  did,  and  if  you  knew  that  it  was  Marie  Tonsard,  you 
VOL.  10-48 


348  THE  PEASANTRY 

would  be  no  further.  Marie  would  be  as  mute  as  a  wall,  and  1 
should  deny  my  words." 

"Come  and  see  me  to-morrow,"  said  the  General. 

"That  is  enough,"  said  Bonnebault;  "if  they  think  that  I 
am  bungling  the  business,  I  will  let  you  know." 

A  week  after  this  strange  conversation,  the  district,  the 
whole  department — nay,  Paris  itself — was  floodel  with  huge 
placards,  wherein  it  was  set  forth  that  the  Aigues  was  to  be 
put  up  for  sale  in  lots;  applications  to  be  made  to  Maitre 
Corbinet,  notary,  Soulanges.  All  the  lots  were  knocked  down 
to  Rigou,  the  total  amount  paid  being  two  million  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  thousand  francs. 

On  the  morrow  of  the  sale  the  names  of  the  buyers  were 
changed.  M.  Gaubertin  took  the  forest,  Kigou  and  Soudry 
had  the  vineyards  and  the  rest  of  the  estate.  The  chateau 
and  the  park  were  resold  to  the  Black  Band,  to  be  pulled  down 
for  building  materials;  only  the  hunting-lodge,  with  its  de- 
pendencies, was  allowed  to  stand — M.  Gaubertin  reserved 
it  as  a  present  for  his  poetical  and  sentimental  spouse. 

Many  years  went  by.  During  the  winter  of  1837,  Emile 
Blondet,  one  of  the  most  remarkable  political  writers  of  the 
time,  had  reached  the  lowest  depth  of  poverty,  which  he  had 
hitherto  concealed  beneath  the  brilliant  and  elegant  surface 
of  his  life.  He  was  hesitating  on  the  brink  of  a  desperate  re- 
solve; he  saw  that  his  work,  his  wit  and  knowledge  of  men 
and  affairs,  had  ended  in  naught,  that  he  was  a  machine  work- 
ing for  the  benefit  of  others.  He  saw  that  all  places  were 
filled;  he  felt  that  he  was  growing  older,  and  knew  that  he 
had  neither  wealth  nor  position.  The  placemen  and  inca- 
pables  of  the  Eestoration  had  succeeded  to  the  bourgeois  im- 
beciles and  incapables,  and  the  Government  was  reconstituted 
as  it  had  been  before  1830.  r  One  evening,  when  suicide,  at 
which  he  had  scoffed  so  often,  was  hovering  in  his  thoughts, 
he  glanced  finally  over  his  unlucky  life,  in  which  work  had 
filled  a  far  larger  space  tha.n  the  dissipation  which  slander 


THE  PEASANTRY  349 

imputed  to  him,  and  saw  the  fair  and  noble  face  of  a  woman 
rise  out  of  the  past,  like  a  stainless  and  unbroken  marble 
statue  amid  the  dreariest  ruins.  His  porter  brought  him  a 
letter  with  a  black  seal.  The  Comtesse  de  Montcornet  wrote 
to  inform  him  of  the  death  'of  her  husband,  who  had  returned 
to  the  army,  and  again  commanded  a  division.  She  was  his 
heir;  she  had  no  children.  That  letter,  in  spite  of  its  wo- 
manly dignity,  told  Blondet  that  the  woman  of  forty,  whom 
he  had  loved  in  his  youth,  held  out  a  comrade's  hand  to  him 
and  a  considerable  fortune. 

Shortly  afterwards  a  marriage  took  place  between  the  Comt- 
esse de  Montcornet  and  M.  Blondet,  a  newly-appointed  pre- 
fect. He  went  to  his  prefecture  by  the  route  on  which  the 
Aigues  formerly  lay,  and  stopped  the  traveling  carriage 
opposite  the  place  where  the  park  gates  used  to  stand,  to  see 
once  more  the  commune  of  Blangy,  so  thronged  with  tender 
memories  for  them  both.  The  country  was  no  longer  recog- 
nizable. The  mysterious  woods,  the  avenues  in  the  park, 
had  been  cleared  away,  the  country  looked  like  a  tailor's  chart 
of  patterns.  The  Peasantry  had  taken  possession  of  the  soil 
as  conquerors  and  by  right  of  conquest;  already  it  had  been 
divided  up  into  more  than  a  thousand  holdings;  already  the 
population  of  Blangy  had  trebled  itself.  The  once  beautiful 
park — so  carefully  ordered,  so  luxuriantly  fair — was  now  an 
agricultural  district,  with  one  familiar  building  standing  out 
in  strong  contrast  against  the  changed  background.  This 
was  the  hunting-lodge,  re-christened  II  Bnen-Retiro  by  Mme. 
Isaure  Gaubertin,  who  had  converted  it  into  a  villa  residence. 
The  building  looked  almost  like  a  chateau,  so  miserable  were 
the  peasants'  cabins  scattered  round  about  it. 

"Behold  the  march  of  progress !"  cried  fimile.  "Here  is  a 
page  from  Jean-Jacques'  Control  Social.  And  here  am  I, 
in  harness,  a  part  of  the  social  machinery  which  brings  about 
such  results  as  these !  Good  heavens !  what  will  become  of 
kings  in  a  little  while  ?  Nay,  what  will  become  of  the  nations 
themselves  in  fifty  years'  time,  if  this  state  of  things  con- 
tinues?" 


350  THE  PEASANTRY 

"You  love  me — you  are  at  my  side.  .  .  The  present 
is  very  fair  for  me,  and  I  hardly  care  to  think  of  such  a  far- 
off  future,"  his  wife  answered. 

"With  you  beside  me,  long  live  the  Present !  and  the  devil 
take  the  Future  !"  cried  the  enraptured  Blondet. 

He  made  a  sign  to  the  man,  the  horses  sprang  forward  at  a 
gallop,  and  the  newly-wedded  lovers  resumed  the  course  of 
their  honeymoon. 


The  author  of  The  Peasantry  should  be  allowed  to  be  sufficiently 
learned  in  the  history  of  his  own  times  to  know  that  there  never 
were  any  Cuirassiers  of  the  Imperial  Guard.  He  takes  the  lib- 
erty of  stating  here  that  he  has  in  his  study  the  uniforms  of 
the  Republic,  the  Empire,  and  the  Restoration;  a  complete  col- 
lection of  the  military  costumes  of  every  country  which  has 
fought  with  France  as  an- enemy  or  as  an  ally;  and  more  military 
works  on  the  wars  of  1792-1815  than  any  Marshal  of  France. 
He  takes  the  opportunity,  through  the  medium  of  the  press,  of 
thanking  those  persons  who  have  honored  him  by  taking  a  suffi- 
cient interest  in  his  work  to  correct  his  mistakes  and  send  him 
information. 

Once  for  all,  he  here  states  in  reply  that  these  inaccuracies  are 
deliberately  and  designedly  made.  The  story  is  not  a  Scene  de  la 
Tie  Militaire,  in  which  an  author  is  bound  not  to  equip  his  in- 
fantry men  with  sabretaches.  Every  attempt  to  deal  with  con- 
temporary history,  even  through  contemporary  types,  has  its 
dangers.  It  is  only  by  making  use  of  a  general  scheme,  in  which 
all  the  details  are  minutely  true,  and  all  the  facts  severally  al- 
tered by  giving  an  unfamiliar  color  to  them,  that  the  petty  reef 
of  "personalities"  can  be  avoided  in  fiction.  In  a  previous  case 
(Une  Tenebreuse  Affaire),  although  the  facts  belonged  to  history 
and  the  details  had  been  altered,  the  author  was  compelled  to 
reply  to  ridiculous  objections  raised  on  the  ground  that  there 
was  but  one  senator  kidnapped  and  confined  in  the  time  of  the 
Empire.  I  quite  believe  it!  Possiblv  be  who  should  have  ab- 
ducted a  second  senator  would  have  been  crowned  with  flowers. 

If  this  inaccuracy  with  regard  to  the  Cuirassiers  is  too  shock- 
Ing,  it  is  easy  to  suppress  the  mention  of  the  Guard;  though,  in 
that  case,  the  family  of  the  illustrious  General  who  commanded 


THE  PEASANTRY  351 

the  regiment  of  horse  which  was  pushed  down  to  the  edge  of 
the  Danube,  might  ask  us  to  account  for  those  eleven  hundred 
thousand  francs,  which  the  Emperor  allowed  Montcornet  to  save 
in  Pomerania. 

We  shall  soon  be  requested  to  give  the  name  of  the  geography 
book  in  which  Ville-aux-Fayes  and  the  Avonne  and  Soulanges 
are  to  be  found.  Let  it  be  said  that  all  these  places,  and  the 
Cuirassiers  of  the  Guard  likewise,  are  to  be  found  on  those 
shores  where  the  Master  of  Ravenswood's  tower  stands;  there 
you  will  find  Saint  Konan's  Well  and  the  lands  of  Tillietudlern 
and  Gandercleugh  and  Lilliput  and  the  Abbey  of  Thelema,  and 
Hoffmann's  privy  councillors,  and  Robinson  Crusoe's  Island,  and 
the  estates  of  the  Shandy  Family;  in  that  world  no  taxes  arc 
paid,  and  those  who  fain  would  make  the  voyage  may  travel 
thither  post,  at  the  rate  of  twenty  centimes  a  volume. 

AUTHOR'S  NOTE. 


A     000  095  274     7 


